An announcement from China earlier this week may mark the
first of many steps which need to be taken to help improve the mess we’ve made
of this planet. A crackdown by Chinese officials has led to the temporarily
closure of more than 80,000 factors. These factories and some of their managing
directors have also been charged with criminal offences for breaches in
emissions over the last year which effect air quality. This is all part of
China’s Communist party attempting to hit it’s 2017 pollution target, and so
with that in mind they have shut forty percent of their factories. 
There are currently two significant environmental targets
China is hoping to reach within set time frames which are related to air
quality. The first of which being to reduce the concentration of hazardous fine
particulate matter such as soot, smoke and liquid droplets produced from
industry to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2035. Whilst the other target is
to reduce their overall emissions from manufacturing by 30% as of the end of
2017, a target which was announced in 2013.
China is yet hit their target of the 30% reduction by the
end of 2017 and so may have been a contributing factor for these mass closures
of factories, and although they have left it till almost the very end of 2017
it is a good sign that they have started to take action.
These closures have clearly had effects on companies as they
have been forced to stop production and can’t complete orders, and people are
having their jobs affected. However it is believe by the masses to be a good
thing. This is because air pollution in China is believed to be attributing to
somewhere between 700,000 -2.2million deaths a year, so increased air quality
will have a significant effect of life expectancy of the Chinese people,
especially in urban areas. In places
such as Beijing the PM2.5 scale which is used to measure the concentration of
hazardous fine particulate matter reached as high as 976 micrograms in early
October. This occurs when weather conditions result in static air so without
the aid of wind dispersal the particulates build up rapidly. This is a concern
as the World Health Organization puts the maximum healthy exposure at 25
micrograms.
 |
| Annual median concentration of PM2.5 |
China unfortunately is not the only country known for having
extremely poor air quality within its urban areas but it is not on its own.
Other cities, mainly across the developing world have similarly poor air
quality. A 2016 study claimed that 80% of cities have air quality which did not
fall within the World Health Organizations guidelines. This included cities
such as Delhi (India) at 122 micrograms, Al Jubail (Saudi Arabia) 152
micrograms, and Zabol (Iran) 217 micrograms.
So hopefully this is the first of many steps for China to
manage to improve their air quality, and once these temporary closures are
sorted the overall outcome is a more positive one.
Thanks for reading!
Check out this link which gives real time global air quality
Check out this video from
No comments:
Post a Comment