Two Major Air Pollutants Increase in China

Darley Shen/Reuters

A statue of the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong last month near chimneys at Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation in Wuhan.

BEIJING — In the first three months of this year, levels of two major air pollutants increased by almost 30 percent here in the Chinese capital, over the same period in 2012, according to a report on Wednesday by a Chinese news organization.

The pollutants — nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter that is between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter, called PM 10 — appeared to have surged sharply in January, showing levels 47 percent higher than the same month last year, according to the report by Beijing News that was translated into English by The Economic Observer. The report cited as its source Chen Tian, the head of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

A third pollutant, sulfur dioxide, decreased slightly over the same three-month period.

Mr. Chen said the main reason for the increase in two pollutants was high levels of emissions. Citing Mr. Chen, the report said "the emissions created by those living and producing in the city far exceed what the environment can take."

The report said the environmental bureau had concluded that the increases in the two pollutants had been also partly due to topography and weather conditions. Beijing recently had its highest levels of relative humidity in a decade, and surface wind speeds were the lowest in 10 years, which together resulted in a lower-temperature inversion layer that trapped pollutants, the report said.

Cities in northern China have been grappling this winter with record levels of air pollution, which have stirred fear and anger among many Chinese. In January, the Beijing municipal government recorded jaw-dropping concentrations of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller, called PM 2.5. The highest concentrations were recorded at nearly 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter, which was on par with some severely polluted days in industrial London during the mid-20th century.

Beijing resembled an airport smokers' lounge in mid-January, and some foreigners called the persistent and omnipresent smog an "airpocalypse."

The Beijing News and Economic Observer quoted Mr. Chen as saying that 60 percent of the increased levels of PM 2.5 were due to the burning of coal and fuel. PM 2.5 is considered more damaging than PM 10, because the smaller particles can penetrate the lungs and embed deeply in tissue.

To prevent cost increases, large state-owned enterprises in the oil and power industries have consistently blocked proposed policies that would cut down the levels of pollutants.

Last Sunday, researchers released data that showed that outdoor air pollution had contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, which was nearly 40 percent of the global total. The data were based on international research done on leading causes of death for the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study, which was published in a paper last December in The Lancet, a British medical journal. In China, outdoor air pollution was the fourth-leading risk factor for death, the researchers said.

An official Chinese news report said last week that the cost of environmental degradation in China in 2010 was 1.54 trillion renminbi, about $230 billion, or 3.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. The amount was three times that of 2004.

A Deutsche Bank report from February said that current growth policies would mean a continuing surge in air pollution over the next decade.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to one of the two major pollutants cited in the report. It is nitrogen dioxide, not nitrous dioxide.

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