preview

Air Pollution

Decent Essays

With a rapid level of industrialization and a growing population throughout the past couple of decades, China has become the world’s largest emitter. Consequently, through the combination of these two factors, the Asian country suffers from high levels of air pollution. Amongst many of the rapidly industrialized cities, Shanghai stands out as one of the greatest commercial and most industrial cities in China. For this reason, due to increases in population, energy consumption and infrastructural density, the levels of different health effects of air pollution have reached serious levels. From increases in heart diseases and mortality rates, to increases in respiratory conditions, it is clear that the city of Shanghai is suffering from epidemic levels of air pollution. Additionally, one of the large factors, amongst others, that can be attributed to health complication throughout Shanghai is the increase of sulfur dioxide in the air. (Song et al., 2008) High levels of air pollution not only cause respiratory health conditions, but it can also lead to death. For example, throughout the last couple of years, results have emerged regarding on the association of air pollution and stroke mortality in Shanghai. In addition, stroke and cardiovascular mortality have become the leading causes of death. (Qian) As Qian and other scholars mention in their article Epidemiological evidence on association between ambient air pollution and stroke mortality, “In Shanghai, there are about

Get Access