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How Chinese Pollution Affects US Air Quality
Author : Wendy Moyer
Submitted : 2011-12-14 07:45:16 Word Count : 454 Popularity: 0
Tags: Online Environmental Courses
It's been approximately thirty years since Deng Xiaoping put China on its course towards rapid industrialization, market growth and urbanization. And although literally hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, it has been at the expense of the quality of that nation's water, air and land.
China has become a huge industrial power in a very short amount of time. But along with its rise to becoming one of the biggest economic powers on Earth it has also become the most polluted country in the world.
Safe drinking water is no longer accessible to close to five hundred million Chinese. The quality of the air in China has been the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. Today the leading cause of death in China is cancer that was caused by pollution.
Much of the Chinese coastline is covered with red tides. The algae in the red tides have changed large areas of the ocean near China for the worst. Much of it is no longer able to sustain marine life.
If you were to visit China today you'll find that cities that once had blue skies overhead are now enshrouded by a toxic gray sheath. There are many cities in China whose residents rarely can see the sun.
According to the European Union, only 1% of the people who live in cities in China breathe what is considered to be safe air. And there are five hundred sixty million city dwellers in that country. That's almost twice the total population of the United States.
These problems have now affected the rest of the world.
China is now the leading producer of greenhouse gases in the world.
For example, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide are spewed into the air by China's power plants. These power plants get their energy by burning coal.
As a result of the toxins that these plants release into the air, acid rain now falls on Tokyo, Japan and Seoul, South Korea. And, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research, a lot of the particulate pollution that the denizens of Los Angeles are forced to live with actually originated in China.
Chinese officials are now blaming the putrid quality of its water and air for literally thousands of instances of social unrest.
Even though plans were made several years ago by the Chinese government to improve the quality of the water and the air, for the most part it has not happened. And it looks like Chinese leadership is either unable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to alter the situation today.
If you would like to learn more about what you can do to help the environment you can enroll in environmental courses on the Internet.
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To learn more about Online Environmental Courses go to http://commonground.edrnet.com/pages/4de09aeab6
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