Air Pollution In China
Since the age of industrial revolution, the emissions of carbon dioxides and other chemical elements have polluted the air in many parts of the world. Since the industrial revolution began in England, Britain was considered as the most polluted area in the world one hundred years ago. But now, since China is the largest industrial country, and industry leads to pollution, air pollution has become a serious problem in China.
The annual average concentration of fine particulate matter(PM2.5), which is the way to measure the quality of air, shows 57 micrograms per meter cubed in China. This data is six times higher than the acceptable limits posted by the World Health Organization. Those polluted air makes a layer of yellow fog over the major cities and millions of Chinese citizens have gotten sick since the 2010s because of the polluted air.
Luckily, things have changed this year. In 2015, the Chinese government started to take care of the problem caused by air pollution and they came up with national plans to purify the polluted air, especially in northern China. The government started to build monitors to collect the data of PM2.5 from major cities all over the country and put regulations on the factories and other facilities that will cause air pollution. By doing that, the air quality in China gets a lot better today, compared to that of the year of 2015.
Air pollution is still one of the most serious environmental problems the whole world is facing today. As the data showed, half of the world’s governments fail to deal with the problem of air pollution and 4.2 millions people die of the disease caused by air pollution each year. It should be the priority for human beings to protect the air.
Works Cited
Qin, Hu, How China is Tackling Air Pollution With Tech And Big Data | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
Author: Kevin Hong
Contact: khong.2023@carmelhs.org
Editor: Kelly Ni