Air Pollution In Beijing
Beijing, the capital of China, since the development of industrialization and economy, the environmental problems emerge gradually. Especially air pollution is becoming a huge problem today. Air pollution is the harmful matters including particulates and biological molecules introduced into Earth’s atmosphere which is harmful to both human health and natural environment. This essay will firstly illustrate the main causes of air pollution in Beijing, including natural causes and man-made causes, and then outline some effects of this problem.
Human activities could have important implications of air pollution in Beijing. Initially, some Chinese traditions are responsible for the problem. The celebration of Lantern Festival with fire works and firecrackers is one of the best examples. According to Wang et.al. (2007), some primary and secondary components such as Ba, K, Sr, Pb, Mg were over five times higher than in the normal days during the lantern festival in 2006 and these components are the significant part of the air pollution. Urbanisation of Beijing, in addition, is a vital reason of the problem. As urbanisation progressing, more factories were built and ran, some of which emitted poison gases and polluted the air. What makes matter worse, urbanisation also increase the usage of vehicles in Beijing and lots of components which can polluted air due to the burning of fossil fuels. Further more, other human activities including land clearing for
Globally, many countries are increasingly feeling the effects of environmental degradation. This has been occasioned by the increasingly evident effects of poor environmental conservation policy. There are currently taking the brunt of environmental degradation that has been occasioned by rapid the industrialization that has occurred both within and out of the country. “Air pollution has been at fault for a significant portion of the country’s environmental problems. Studies have identified the country’s economic boom as major contributor to this (Jitendra and Tanvi, 42)”. In East Asia, yellow dust it calls “Asian dust” is the biggest issue, which is mostly influenced by China’s industrialization and coal burning electrical generating plants. The main issue concerning South Korea and Japan is the air pollution caused by China's rapid economic growth crossing the boundaries into these two countries, it is blown from China to Korea and Japan causing hazardous air pollution. There causes many problems, it occurs respiratory problems, an increase in incidence of acid rain, highway accidents, and forcing many residents to stay home. Also, dust will enter a human’s mouth and organ which will cause respiratory problems through inhalation. “Air pollutants are gaseous or particulate matter which that have an impact on human health and natural ecosystems” (Lee, Adeel, 134).
The population growth in Beijing contributes to a big portion of its pollution. The population has risen from 11 million to 16 million in just 7 years, and has nearly doubled over the past century. Factories that utilize coal burning contribute to the smog currently present in Beijing. Many of these factories depend on outdated and inefficient technology which emits air pollutants. Beijing is a victim of its own topography since it's surrounded by mountains which traps pollution within the city. Air quality worsens in the spring and summer seasons when the humidity and temperature levels increase. Air pollution has been so drastic to the point that the city often engulfs in smog making it near zero visibility which in turn causing road
In the past decade, the severe air pollution problem in fast developing countries, particularly in China, has caused highly social and scientific attention. In 2014, 92 % of the world population are exposed over to the WHO Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) PM2.5 concentration level of 10 μg/m3 (World Health Organization, 2016). Ambient particulate matter (PM) pollution ranked as the third leading risk factor in India and Nepal, and ranked as the fifth in China (GBD 2015 Risk Factors Collaborators, 2016). In 2012, about 3 million deaths globally were attributed solely to ambient air pollution, and around 87% of it occurred in low- and middle-income countries (World Health Organization, 2016).
Air pollution is one of the biggest causes of environmental impact in any region. Therefore, air quality needs to be evaluated and maintained for avoiding health hazards. According to WHO, air pollution claims more than 2.4 million lives each year (WHO, 2002). Cities have to face more air pollution problems as compared to
As the exploration of the industrial development and increased speed of the urban sprawl in Beijing, many severe environmental issues attribute mainly to the anthropocentric activities have been come out of the scene. One of them is the air pollution. Air pollution has been regarded as the most severe environment issue in China since it has already threatened to physical health, especially for the respiratory tract and lung. “In January 2013, Beijing experienced historical heavy air pollution. In this particular month, very few days were observed with blue sky.” (Lijian Han et.al., 2015) According to the analysis of the driving factors, “the population grew fast, and energy consumption and the number of vehicles increased rapidly” (Ju Zhang et.al., 2010), these factors add together can make the air quality worse than any one of them separately can. Firstly, it has been an undoubted truth that more and more people originally lived in rural has been moved to core urban of Beijing since there are more opportunities in there. Therefore, the huge explosion of urban population with more energy release and more CO2 exhalation is seen as an inevitably primary factor causing the bad air quality. What’s more, as the population
To begin with, the amount of inhabitants in Beijing causes pollution. As the capital of China, most every Chinese person dreams of living in Beijing, for this reason Beijing is full of people, and as they move in the air becomes worse. Beijing population is increasing every day and as people increase car use also increases. With nearly 20 million of people living in Beijing, this amounts to 5 million cars driving around every day. Even though the government tries to limit cars that drive in one day by the plate number of each car, but still these cars create abundant carbon dioxide. To make matters
According to the EPA pollution recommendations, when a city reaches an air quality index (AQI) of over 400, all people should avoid going outdoors. Beijing’s highest AQI is 895. This impacts the daily lives of Beijing citizens immensely. Air pollution has been related to increased cases of cancer, heart disease, stroke and other respiratory illnesses. It is also associated with asthma in children.
Through urbanization, the most common view is the establishment of factories. Most of these factories are located in heavy industrial areas of the cities. It is easy to hypotheses that air quality has become worse in Shanghai since it started urbanization in the 1980s. However, there is not a proportional
Air pollution by definition, is the presence in or introduction into the air of a substance which has harmful or poisonous effects. Beijing is a major Chinese city that endures air pollution significantly. A study on the global burden of disease found that outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China each year (Chemical & Engineering News,2017). As China is the world's second largest economy behind the United States, it is most definitely under the influence of globalization. Globalization causes industrialization, a process that will inevitably create pollution.70% of air pollution in China is from the tailpipes of automobiles (Conserve Energy Future, 2017). Thus, the introduction of advanced transportation brought by globalization has adversely affected China's atmosphere.
The world economy has improved rapidly as a result of globalization in past decades. However, many environmental problems began to emerge during the economic boom. Especially, in the middle of the 20th century after World War II, many countries restarted economic development and urban construction. At this time, severe air pollution influenced a number of regions. For instance, London was affected by a critical air pollution event, called the Great Smog of London, in December 1952. During a week, 4000 people had died as a direct result of smog and over 100000 were got ill by the human respiratory tract. Subsequently, from 1978 to now, China has seen a great amount of economic increase, with its gross domestic product (GDP) expanding hundreds time since the reform and opening up. Although China has obtained a huge progress with the globalization, it has resulted in a series of environmental problems at the same time. The aim of the essay is to discover how the globalization affected the environment on air pollution, soil pollution and biological invasion in China. And I intend to analyze the instances of the connection between air
Air pollution is considered one of China’s main environmental threat. Some experts suggest it is due to the amount of manufacturing companies and vehicles. While others say it is the electrical plants which spew
The Economic boom from factories connection to air pollution is unconventional. The reason factories stay open is only for the monopoly it has over monetary distress. The economical perspective affects the health concerns beyond a doubt. Nearly 5-6 million people die every year due to an illness related to air pollution. The pollution is tremendously bad in China, which the people of China have to stay inside their homes with the windows shut at all times. China has faced their first “red alert” which has put a halt to usage of motor vehicles, and factories stopped operation. People all over the world are suffering from air pollution, some cases worse than others. Urbanization constantly grows each year which contributes to air pollution which has an immense impact on the
This article that is based on the air pollution in China talks about how contaminated air is constantly killing people who live in major cities of China, especially because the levels of pollution are much higher in China than they are in the United States and other areas. This article displays an environmental and social issue because people expect that there will be no host for the 2022 Olympics if the issues with the environment and pollution keep up in China. This could be a major disadvantage towards the way the Olympics works and towards the amount of deaths caused by pollution in China.
One of the main cause of air pollution is human activities like mining, construction, transportation, industrial work, agriculture, smelting, and some others. There are also natural causes that result to air pollution also such as wild fires, volcano eruptions. These are even rare and for the most part only affect the area that it surrounds. The bigger problem is going back to us humans and knowing that we can stop certain activities to help better the world and our air we breathe every day. One of the “invisible killers” in today’s air pollution includes nitrogen oxides, ozone, and very small particulate matter. (Frank) Today, PM has been researched to be held most responsible for most of the health effects caused by the air. Fossil fuel combustion is most common in more of the urban areas, which would come from the road construction that occurs quite frequently. (Frank) There has also been a rise in deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease with older people. (Seaton)
As mentioned in Diamond’s book, Collapse, China has been facing and is still facing air pollution and environmental damages. The air pollution crisis in China is caused mainly by their large economic boom causing more factories, vehicles, and overpopulation (Clark, et al.). “Pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide are rising due to the increasing numbers of motor vehicles and the coal- dominated energy generation” (Diamond 363). Because of the immediate effects of air pollution such as the smog that is visible to citizens in China, many citizens wear face masks every day to protect themselves and their health. Diamond also mentions the fact that because China has the worst environmental damages such as air pollution, this might affect the rest of the world.