“Made in China” Comes at a Price: Cancer Villages China has overtaken Germany as the world’s top exporter of goods, which marks another breakthrough in China’s rise to the top and its ever growing economic influence. As China’s export rates rise to the highest in the world, so does its pollution. Judith Shapiro, the director of the Masters in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development for the School of International Service at American University, states that with “20 of the World’s 30 most polluted cities [residing] in China” it is an easy task to see the severity of pollution (Sharpiro). In order to rise to its high economic position China’s government ignores pollution regulations, allowing the release of waste into the air and …show more content…
Doctors at a hospital in the Jiangsu province blame the girl’s lung cancer on pollution. China’s pollution rates are high due to exhaust from cars, the burning of coal, and factory emissions. Since the economic boom the Chinese now own more than 120 million cars, while the United States only owns sixty two million. These high amounts of pollution from the exhaust has even higher effects on the health of Chinese citizens. Even with these dangerous amounts of car pollution most of the blame rests on the country’s large consumption of coal. China burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined, leaving auto emissions accounting for only twenty five percent of the problem. The World Resources Institute discovered that particle matter and Sulfur dioxide, both produced by burning coal, surpass World Health Organization standards in the majority of Chinese cities. In the northern city of Yancheng, a chemical plant turned the villages of Dongjin into a cancer village within a few years. Although China is armed with the world’s best environmental laws and regulations, its government faces huge challenges when it comes to enforcing the laws. There are many reason the laws remain unenforced, money being one, cutting corners on enforcement being another, so the pollution continues to worsen. The smog seen lurking over the streets of China is caused by the emissions of particle matter and these emissions contribute to the rising risks
Air pollution is basically when has become a problem in China. It has caused problems to ones health. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, such fine particles can cause asthma, bronchitis, and acute and chronic respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath and painful breathing, and may also lead to premature death. China does not go a day without one dying fro air pollution. Last year 7 million people die annually because of exposure to polluted air (The World health Organization). China's air pollution has triggered ones asthma. It has also cause ones to develop lung cancer, which could be very deadly.
Auslin recounts specific stories of his numerous trips to China to express the magnitude of the effect pollution has on everyday life. The author vividly remembers his first-hand experience with the smog in China,
In the article “Beijing to Raise Threshold on Red Alerts for Smog”, it’s very interesting to know that finally China is doing something about their air pollution problem. For years and years they haven’t done anything because China doesn’t have the same rules and regulation as the United States of America. China produces a lot of products for different countries so that’s a major source of pollution also and they don’t have any kind of regulations on the smoke coming from the factories, and the air quality is terrible their as well. In the United States the EPA has the authority to shut down factories and tell them they need to make changes because we take pollution seriously compared to China who just takes it lightly which isn’t a good thing.
“Cleaning up China” written by Rana Foroohar, informed Americans about environmentalist Ma Jun’s efforts to reduce pollution in China. Foroohar is an assistant managing editor for Time magazine. She also speaks to millions of television news watchers across the world for CNN. Foroohar recently traveled to Beijing and had the opportunity to extensively interview Ma, who has developed the strategy of publishing some of the polluting companies’ environmental data online. Using the Internet, he planned to expose to the entire world how foreign companies and their suppliers are polluting China, using that exposure to persuade those businesses to change their policies. Those records quickly went viral, producing a substantial impact. “ A 2011 report on Apple, for instance resulted in a major effort to clean up environmental violation in the company’s supply chain” (Foroohar, par. 4). Apple is just one of the many companies trying to change their environmental impact on China, principally because they care about the image they project to the world. However, Ma Jun’s strategic plan is not limited only to major corporations but to convince the entire world to jump on the environmental bandwagon. Foroohar wrote, “The initial goal is to coax the SOEs to grab the low-hanging fruit—retrofitting coal-fired power plants to reduce the worst emissions or stopping overproduction of steel” (Foroohar, par. 6). However, according to the news reports on CNN as late as October
One of China’s best successes has in turn been one of its biggest downfalls. One of the main problems is China’s greatest success which has been its phenomenal economic growth. This is one of the main drivers of the current environmental problems that the country faces. Factories dump pollutants into the air and water. It is difficult to see the Chinese government making the significant sacrifices required to improve their environment if it means slowing down their economic growth.
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.
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).
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
The smog in Xingtai blankets the northeastern Chinese city in a perpetual gray overcast. Media outlets show a monochromatic slide show of how badly that air quality is in regions of China creating and their own buzzword, Airpocalypes. Pictures of heavy smog smothering high-rises, offices, and apartment complexes that would fit well in Ridley Scott’s dystopian movie, Blade Runner. Images of motorcyclist wearing pollution masks in the hopes of blocking out most of the harmful air particles. Californians can see these images and yet feel as if a scenario like Xingtai can never happen here.
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
For decades America has fought tirelessly to put a controlled cap on pollution, but surprisingly, America is not the problem when speaking in terms of pollution. World in the Balance- China Revs Up is a documentary on the continuously growing pollution rates in China. The documentary also explains what causes the rise in pollution and how it affects the environment around the world. The theme that follows this documentary is that, through the constant advances of China, pollution continues to grow and negatively impact the world. Cars and smoke created from coal is only two of the many ways pollutants enter the air in China, which makes it very difficult to breathe and even in some cases leads to health issues.
We see that China has polluted more than 10 times the amount of pollution in the U.S. The population of the cities are relatively the same; This data was published in January of 2015. By looking at this chart, we understand that pollution is evident and that we need to do
Now China’s achievements in economic growth are well known to the whole world, as well as a high environmental cost. Tianying, China, a small city that might appear unfamiliar to most native Chinese, is known by environmentalists for its place among the worst cities of lead poisoning. Also in the watch list is Linfen, China, a city always in thick grey or even black fog, is so polluted that would never
On the other end of the effects, the heavy air pollution in China causes a variety of health problems. The air pollution in china greatly increases the cases of cancer, respiratory diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, a weakening immune system, and a reduced lung function ("Air pollution in China"). The
Air pollution is a phenomenon that there are harmful materials in the earth’s atmosphere. Worldwide attention has been focused on air pollution in rapidly urbanizing cities since the Kyoto Protocol of year in 1997. Hong Kong air pollution is one of the most serious over the world. Air pollution will bring a lot of influence such as health and economic problem. There are more than 7 million population in Hong Kong and this increase the requirement from different area such as transportation which will worsen the air pollution. According to the statistic from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology(2014), there are more than 6, 800, 000 family doctor visits each year for respiratory problems which are caused by air pollution. The