Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12949038
A team of researchers at Chinese, German and Canadian universities have tracked the impacts of deteriorating air at that time. They found that particle pollution deaths in China were increasing at about 213,000 a year and peaked at 2.6mn people in 2005.
More positively, the impact of rapid improvements in China’s air pollution were also seen, with decreases of 59,000 deaths a year from 2013 to 2019.
Air pollution in China is still far worse than in many developed countries. In 2019, about half of China’s cities failed to meet their own national standards, let alone those from the World Health Organization.
[Edit typo.]
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Now, a team of researchers at Chinese, German and Canadian universities have tracked the impacts of deteriorating air at that time.
In 2019, about half of China’s cities failed to meet their own national standards, let alone those from the World Health Organization.
The country now has comprehensive air pollution action plans to win what the government terms the “blue skies defence war”.
With big investments in renewable energy and future decarbonisation targets, at first sight, it looks like China has turned a corner.
Prof Michael Brauer from the University of British Columbia, who was not involved in the new research, said: “The same level of air pollution will have a greater impact on an older and less healthy population with increased levels of diseases impacted by air pollution – many of which increase with age.
Brauer explained the implications: “So, for the future, for China to even to just tread water, it needs to reduce air pollution even more aggressively.”
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