Message-ID: <334794F7.36EE@mind.net> Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 12:20:07 +0000 From: "B. Diamond" <mailto:bdiamond@mind.net> Subject: [Fwd: Fast-paced growth in China causes major health problems] To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
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APR 6 1997=20
Fast-paced growth in China causes major health problems=20
BEIJING -- Nearly 18 years of fast-paced industrial growth in China has produced the predictable environmental consequences, with five of China's biggest cities now ranking in the world's top 10 cities for polluted air.=20
China's Environmental News, a national environmental daily, published a seven-part series of articles recently examining the alarming state of pollution in the country and the consequences it has wrought on both urban and rural communities.=20
"At present, the residents in a large number of China's largest cities are living under long-term, harmful air-quality conditions," Mr Zhao Weijun, vice-director of the air pollution department of the National Environmental Protection Agency, told the= paper.=20
Exacerbating the problem, he said, is that most people in China are unaware of the slow and long-term effects that high levels of dust particles and toxic chemicals have on human health.=20
Acid rain, which is said to fall over more than 40 per cent of the country, has come to be known as "an airborne god of death" because of the havoc which sulphur dioxide, a main by-product of the widespread use of coal as fuel in China, wreaks on agricultural lands.=20
In urban areas, out of every 100,000 people, an average of 35.6 die of lung cancer. The death rate due to respiratory diseases has seen a nearly 25-per-cent increase over the last 10 years, the daily said.=20
Air quality in Shenyang, Xian, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou places them among the 10 most polluted cities in the world.=20
According to a 1995 survey, the amount of dust in the air over China's northern cities surpassed World Health Organisation standards by four to five times, while in southern Chinese cities, the amount is over three times the standard.=20
In Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu, there is a saying that describes the state of pollution:=20
"From the sparrows in the sky to the intestines of pigs, everything is black."=20
Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, spews out 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of toxic matter annually from cars, while respiratory diseases have reportedly risen 10 per cent annually over the past several years.=20
In Shanghai, 300 to 500 people are said to die a slow death every year due to poor air quality. The air in Shanghai reportedly contains 302 different types of chemicals -- a third of them carcinogenic.=20
Traffic police in Lanzhou, Harbin and other industrial cities suffer from a series of complications attributed to foul air, including a greater-than-normal occurrence of high blood pressure, neurosis, chronic eye problems and bronchitis.=20
Car exhausts are also increasingly adding to China's air pollution woes.= =20
Figure can not be placed within the measure Despite low car-emission standards, only 61 per cent of the vehicles in Beijing met those standards last year.=20
Worse, only 30 per cent of the capital's taxis made the grade, and few, if any, of the offending vehicles were removed from operation.=20
The Chinese government has attached much importance to cleaning up the environmental mess -- but lacks funds. Also hampering efforts is the low-level of environmental awareness and inertia at huge loss-making, largely backward industrial state enterprises. -- Kyodo.=20
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