Pollution in China has made international news lately with foreign executives asking for air filtration systems for their kid’s outdoor playgrounds. Recognizing this problem, the country is moving to curtail vehicle and factory air pollution by adopting standards stricter international emission standards. China has adopted the same vehicle emission standards as the European standard, known as “Europe IV,” and factory emission standards are even tighter than the USA and Europe.
One way to reduce pollution in the cities is to reduce vehicles on the road. Beijing currently has 5.5 million vehicles on its roads. New rules will cap that number at 6 million. The other way is to tighten emission standards for vehicles, coal-fired power plants, and smelters.
Air pollution is comprised of particulate matter (PM2.5), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), arsenic (As), Ozone (O3), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb). Carbon dioxide (CO2), while it contributes to global warming, is more of an environmental issue than a health-related one. These other chemicals either cause respiratory problems, aggravate bronchitis and asthma, or in extreme dosages, can cause death.
SO2 comes mainly for coal-powered power plants, which is where China gets most of its electricity. (The United States has an abundance of natural gas so it is moving away from coal in favor of natural gas to power turbines at thermoelectric power plants.) As of 2008, China is the world’s top emitter of SO2. Acid rain is a serious problem. It changes the Ph in agriculture soil (i.e. makes it more acidic) and, worse, pollutes streams, rivers, and lakes.
Sulfur is an important element of fertilizer. The United States implemented stricter sulfur emission standards starting in the 1960s that have grown progressively stricter. Sulfur levels have fallen so far that farmers now need to buy sulfur to put on their fields. Years ago that was not necessary because there was so much sulfur pollution in some areas.
Like the carbon credit programs of other nations, China has an exchange where companies can buy and sell carbon and sulfur credits. Think of these as permits that allow a company to emit pollutants into the air subject to the cap of the number of credits they have. The goal of these programs is to limit pollution by making it expensive to do so, thus giving the company an economic incentive to reduce emissions. Companies that need additional permits to run their factories buy those from companies who have excess credits.
Chinese power plant emission standards for SO2 is 100 mg/m3 (or 100 milligrams per cubic meter of air), which is far more stringent than the United States’ limit of 160 and the European standard of 200.
The Chinese standard for particulate material (PM2.5) is 30 mg/m3. In Europe it is 50 and in the USA is it 23. PM2.5 are fine-grained particles of size 2.5 microns or less–this size can pass into the lungs. That is smaller than PM10, which are coarse particles such as those that coat vehicles parked next to dirty operations. PM10 particles cannot pass into the lungs.
China has adopted the European IV emission standard for passenger vehicles. Emission standards for vehicles is given in grams per kilometer driven. The emission standards for passenger vehicles for nitrogen dioxide (NOx), particulate matter (PM2.5), and carbon monoxide CO are 0.25, 0.025, and 1 gram per kilometer, respectively. These standards vary by vehicle size, truck versus car, the age of the vehicle, and the region in which the vehicle is operated. In sum, you could say these standards are comparable if not stricter than current American standards.
Vehicle pollution is the cause of about 70% of the smog that casts a haze over certain Chinese cities. Chinese can check the levels of ozone and particulate material (PM2.5) in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Sheyang every hour at the Twitter site https://twitter.com/BeijingAir. That site gets its data from http://www.stateair.net/web/post/1/1.html, which is run by the US government.
Take a sample day to measure the situation. On Friday 10/11/2013, Beijing air quality for PM 2.5 averaged 59 mg/m3 ranging from a low of 19 to a high of 158 with the numbers climbed steadily through the day. That converts to an air quality index of 153, which is classified by international norms as “unhealthy.”
To put the Beijing number in perspective, consider some other cities around the world that are also considered to have problems with air pollution. Mexico City’s annual average for the same pollutant is about 22. Santiago, Chile’s average for two winter months (July, August) was 36. (The winter months in Santiago and in Los Angeles when air pollution is made worse by cold air aloft trapping warm air below and their location between the mountains and the sea thus making ventilation poor.)
The Huffington Post reports that Chinese state media said in July that it plans to invest 1.7 trillion yuan ($277 billion USD) to curtail air pollution over the next 5 years. The government will also give cash rewards to Beijing, Tianjin, and the regions of Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia if they meet certain targets for reducing air pollution. These are regions where coal-related air pollution is worst.
Walker Rowe is Publisher at Southern Pacific Review. He is currently working on a book on pollution in Chile, where he resides.
