Breathing Beijing's Air Is the Equivalent of Smoking Almost 40 Cigarettes a Day 182
iONiUM writes: The Economist has a story about how bad the air quality is in Beijing. Due to public outcry the Chinese government has created almost 1,000 air quality monitoring stations, and the findings aren't good. They report: "Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America's highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested. Berkeley Earth's scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing's air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high."
not shock (Score:5, Funny)
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The Chinese are avid smokers anyway, so not a big deal.
Re:not shock (Score:5, Funny)
Well, yeah, it's probably better for them to breathe the local air through a filter tip.
Re:not shock (Score:5, Funny)
It's all false propaganda. Western lies and deceit. We all breath pure mountain air, straight from the Himilaya's!
Re:not shock (Score:4, Funny)
Perri'air?
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What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?
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Re: not shock (Score:2)
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I thought the grammar Allies won that war? Though it did seem like a losing cause until the American grammar rules entered the fight.
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Except the filter doesn't catch the polonium and to a lesser extent radioactive lead that is in tobacco. C Everett Koop warned us about that since the late 1980s or early 1990s. Coal pollution also pumps out radioactive particles (uranium and thorium), but those don't emit alpha rays anywhere near as quickly as polonium.
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So it's like 80 cigarrettes a day?
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It's not a big surprise to the Chinese either. They know, and they are trying to fix it. But the undertaking to fix this is a huge one, and I doubt we'll see any real results in the next 5 years.
They are however working on regulations for large power stations and car emissions, ot my knowledge. I wonder if they also work on regulations for the smaller processes - some factories have a very dirty and inefficient combusion, no gas cleaning whatsoever, and a low chimney. These need to be cleaned up badly.
Re: not shock (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what unregulated industry looks like. Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities. Making super cheap stuff is easy if you don't have to pay all your costs but can dump them on other people to (in this case literally) suck up.
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Re: not shock (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly when does your pollution become an aggression against me? And the mechanism to deal with this under a libertarian regime would be what exactly? You know, since you hate government and all.
Says you. Funny, I've never seen externalities addressed by libertarianism. You can spin it any way you want, but if the communists in China (which the economy itself is becoming a hybrid communist/capitalist model) were libertarian the shit would still be happening.
Go fucking live in Somalia and leave the adults to get work done, please.
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Exactly when does your pollution become an aggression against me?
The idea is basically that you can make as much pollution you want within your private property, for as long as you want, provided you never, ever, dump that population into anyone else's private property, because dumping anything on another's private property without explicit permission is a violation of the other's private property's rights.
So, anytime a factory produces air pollution and it gets carried by the wind over the factory's borders into a neighbor's land, or anytime a factory produces chemical
Re: not shock (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this view is:
1) What if Big Company A dumps the pollution on their land, but it seeps into the groundwater and poisons wells off their land. They didn't put the pollution off their land. Do they need to contain the pollution in some manner? What if that containment fails? What if it is properly contained but an exceptional event occurs and it leaks? Exactly what constitutes proper containment? Before long, you have environmental laws passed and enforced again.
2) What if Big Company A pollutes and the victims are Poor People B who don't have the financial resources for a legal battle? Can big companies do whatever they want provided that they do it to people who can't afford to fight back?
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1) According libertarian theory, this can all be reduced to the defense of property laws: Did something of yours end up invading my property? Yes? Did I authorize it? No? You're violating.
Notice that it doesn't matter why your thing (whatever it is) ended up in my property, if your thing moved from your property into my property without my authorization, you're responsible for it having ended up there, and you're violating my property. From that point onwards, it's up to me whether I'll move charges against
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Let's allow your absolutist stance to end civilization as we know it.
"Mine" is a stretch. Explaining how a theory works doesn't mean subscribing to it. The mark of intellectual freedom is the ability to hold and talk about ideas one disagrees with without outright jumping into criticism.
Anyway, libertarians did deal with your reduction ad absurdim. And they actually agree with it, not considering it absurdum at all.
For them, negative liberty, that is, the freedom to say "no" about one's property and be 100% respected in this wish, is indeed absolute and comes before any othe
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What happens if Company A contains the pollution on their land, then goes out of business and liquidates their assets to their shareholders who pass them on through inheritance once or twice before the pollution leaks into neighboring land?
Libertarian thinking puts a lot of emphasis on the concept of absolute private property, but it also puts a lot of emphasis in the notion of absolute personal responsibility. Therefore, in a libertarian society there is no such thing as corporate personhood shielding shareholders. A corporation is just a public name, but the responsibility is fully over the individual humans beings enabling the acts done under its name.
Therefore, as long as individual A owns property X, he is fully responsible for whatever
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I know you're just giving the theory behind the libertarian position on pollution, not necessarily endorsing it
Indeed. I know a lot about libertarianism because I studied it. I'm sympathetic to it, many of its theories are quite interesting, but I'm no libertarian myself. My own sympathies lie more with "religion-less distributism [wikipedia.org]". :-)
You vs. Shell Oil
I wonder who can afford more lawyers and who has a longer lifespan, so if one side can drag the case out long enough, they win by default?
That would be a failed libertarian system if clear cut cases of violation of property weren't solved quickly. In a functional libertarian system, the matter would be decided pretty quickly. Did Shell's oil damage your property? Then they're in the wrong, period. There's nothing to dra
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Says you. Funny, I've never seen externalities addressed by libertarianism.
The theory I've heard is some hand waving about it all being resolved in court. Frankly that just means the group with the most money will do whatever the heck they want. Externalities and social goods are two major flaws in Libertarian philosophy.
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Libertarians don't hate government, they consider it a necessary evil. We know we have to have government but we want the least possible amount to manage a safe and free society. Conservatives and Liberals want more and more government to manage their goals. It's always "we need to make a law or regulation" without any consideration of the consequences. There is no excuse for the out of control growth of government under both Democrats and Republicans. They both love more and more government.
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Idiot, Somalia is borderline anarchy compared to the west. The discussion has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the governing of a society.
I've had a gutsful of fuckwits like you who choose to only see things in your own myopic terms, because you childishly project your issues onto others. Then you call them racist. You idiots sure do love your perceived 'racism'. Facts-be-damned, you want to be outraged and won't let reality interfere with your position.
It was YOU that brought up the topic
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No, I'm trying to tell you that "Fuck off and live in Somalia" is not racist.
You are determine to call me racist no matter what I say. You'll go so far as to twist my words to suit your preferred interpretation because otherwise it wouldn't fit your narrative. In short, you're having a conversation with yourself because you refuse to respond to what I'm actually saying.
You still wondering why people with your attitude exasperate others?
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You are responding to the original comment rather than my reply? Well, if you're not going to respond to me then reply to the GP and not myself, you fucking idiot.
Actually, I have a better idea: go die in a fire.
Re: not shock (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not the OP, but check my reply above [slashdot.org].
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One feature of libertarianism is that government is suppose to be resolving disputes. What should happen is anyone with property being negatively impacted by someone else polluting should take that someone to court. The court should rightly find that they need to stop or compensate the other person.
You would not need specific regulation liability would force everyone to behave. The results would probably be much better because rather than one size fits all regulation, actually damages would need to be as
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What should happen is anyone with property being negatively impacted by someone else polluting should take that someone to court.
That's cute. You think I can find that someone who IS polluting? And prove they are the one who polluted me?
You would not need specific regulation liability would force everyone to behave. The results would probably be much better because rather than one size fits all regulation, actually damages would need to be assessed and determined.
You do actually believe that? Seriously? How much do you think those assessments and determinations would cost? How much effort? But no, regulation is not one-size fits all, otherwise we'd not treat some pollutants different than others.
So for example in ecologically sensitive areas the amount of polluting you can do might be much lower at least if you wish to avoid being sued into oblivian.
Bad example, it's already possible to treat some areas as more sensitive than others.
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How about we just be honest and say that libertarianism means whatever a libertarian says it means at any time in any situation?
And what air do you own as an individual? The air around your face? The air on your property? And how
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Re: not shock (Score:5, Insightful)
How are issues with odors and other types of pollution resolved by the tort law as it stands now? Would a factory that started spewing poisonous gases be liable for any downwind damages? You are right though that "own air" is a poor choice of words.
If my lungs are destroyed by your factory, it's not much solace to me if my heirs get some money 5 years after I'm dead. I'd much rather have a strongly enforced regulation that prevents you from doing it in the first place.
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There are laws against pollution and that includes bad smells for prolonged periods.
Yes, thanks to government regulations. Whether or not some Texas AG chooses to enforce the law or not.
Re: not shock (Score:1)
The air is a part of the commons. Nobody has exclusive rights to it. Nobody is allowed to sully it more than is commonly allowed.
You hadn't already figured this out?
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Libertarians don't recognize the concept of the commons (except geo-libertarians, but those are about as much libertarian as anarcho-capitalists are anarchists).
Only people who own land (and the airspace above it) affected by pollution have right to compensation for that pollution from a libertarian perspective. Anyone who doesn't own affected land and without a contractual right to clean air can choke to death on the pollution without it being an issue.
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This is what unregulated industry looks like. Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities. Making super cheap stuff is easy if you don't have to pay all your costs but can dump them on other people to (in this case literally) suck up.
But.. but. Muh roads!!
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This is hilarious. Projecting the results from a cradle-to-grave communist all-controlling government onto a theoretical libertarian society, when the two philosophies are polar opposites.
Perhaps you should be warning against a continuance of US big-government statism, instead, as the elimination of private property rights contributed heavily to the problems in China.
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Excuse me-- did you just call China libertarian?
MY HEAD ASPLODE
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Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities.
...because everybody knows that the libertarian ideal is a Communist Kleptocracy with the absolute right to do whatever the hell said government wants, right?
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I don't understand metric (Score:5, Funny)
What's that pipeloads of tobacco per semifortnight?
Re:I don't understand metric (Score:4, Funny)
depends, corncob or calabash?
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In fact, the hogshead is a valid unit for measuring the amount of tobacco you have. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead) So you can have your Simpson's quote and eat it too.
Beijing is not China (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China. Sigh. It's like there's only one city in China. Imagine if European journalists assumed New York City was all there was to know about the entire USA. And China is even bigger, and has four times the population! I think the problem is due to the fact that most Western journalists live in Beijing, and they are not really interested in reporting about anywhere else other than where they live. This is called closed-mindedness and provincialism if it occurs
Re:Beijing is not China (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are you seeing that assumption made? As far as i can see, the article and summary both clearly make distinctions between conditions in Bejing and throughout the country as a whole.
For instance:
Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold.
Agree that people should watch that documentary though - it's very good.
Re:Beijing is not China (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I expect anyone to RTFA of course, but the article is actually a report on Berkeley Earth's study [berkeleyearth.org] on the 1500-site national air-reporting system, and most of the figures given are for all of China. The only specific Beijing reference is the "40 packs a day" metaphor.
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It's not just Beijing that has really bad air, although I agree that it's not all of China. Other very polluted cities include: Xian, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Nanjing, etc.
Re:Beijing is not China (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China. Sigh. It's like there's only one city in China. Imagine if European journalists assumed New York City was all there was to know about the entire USA. And China is even bigger, and has four times the population! I think the problem is due to the fact that most Western journalists live in Beijing, and they are not really interested in reporting about anywhere else other than where they live.
It's pretty bad in most areas of China where there are actually monitoring stations (which is where there are actually people). Here's a pointer to an interactive map which demonstrates it graphically
http://aqicn.org/map/californi... [aqicn.org]
One has to wonder what the hell is going on in Kashi and diqu zhan Hotan, which are near the Kyrgystan border, and have the highest and second highest (respectively) "bad" numbers of any reporting stations in the world.
This is called closed-mindedness and provincialism if it occurs in rural people, but now it's suddenly acceptable?
Actually, it's called "journalists are assigned "minders" and are only permitted to go wherever the heck the government lets them go, and nowhere else, so they only see what the government allows them to see". Welcome to China; new employee orientation for the state controlled media for foreign journalists is on alternate Tuesdays.
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Re: Beijing is not China (Score:1)
If you switch to the satellite picture and zoom in, it is the Aizizi Diyare Noodle restaurant that is doing most of the polluting in Kashi. Remind me not to eat there.
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Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China.
That's not an assumption at all. This just happens to be air monitoring in one specific place. Are you implying that China is not a dirty place? That's demonstrably false with the air quality being utter garbage all over the populated areas of the continent.
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This article makes no assumptions of the kind you assume it is making. You clearly didn't as much as open TFA or it would have been plain as day your assumption about its assumptions is incorrect. This is called closed-mindedness and lack of a clue if it occurs in normal people, but now it's suddenly acceptable?
If you want the real story, RTFA.
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Imagine if European journalists assumed New York City was all there was to know about the entire USA.
Then they would be just like American journalists?
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Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China.
Did you miss the part of TFA which says that the study covers 97% of the population in China, and that the corridor between Beijing and Shanghai is the worst? There's even a nice map with pretty colors and everything. The darkest spot on the map doesn't look like it's Beijing, either, it looks like the region between Shijiazhuang and Liaocheng, southwest of Beijing, is the worst.
What about Los Angeles (L.A.)? (Score:2)
How many cigarettes is that in a day? It bugs me when some people smoke near me. Argh!
Re: What about Los Angeles (L.A.)? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry, we get just as annoyed when non smokers whine and bitch near us. Whole lotta air on the planet. Nobody's forcing you to breathe near me.
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Like in the office's cubicles at work after they smoked outdoor?
We're breathing Beijing's air all over the planet (Score:2)
Can we call it an 'invasion' or 'chemical warfare' and do our thing? If the borders can't stop the smog, why should they be able to stop us?
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What if climate change were a big vegan tree-hugger leftist conspiracy but we cleaned up the planet anyway?
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It's actually just like cigarettes. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's an exhibit called Bodies Revealed that showcases preserved human bodies - all of them from China - to show what our insides look like and just how big some of our organs are (they had one display that was just nerves, which was absolutely astounding). One of the exhibits shows off the lungs. I don't know if there are any pictures, but there are MASSIVE black spots on the lungs, the kind you'd expect to see in someone who smoked a lot. I remember the tour guide saying when someone asked that the black spots weren't from smoking, but from breathing in polluted air day after day. They weren't quite as bad as smoker's lungs, which get damaged over time from the heat of the cigarette smoke, but apart from that were identical in every way.
And it's not even in the top 10 worst. (Score:5, Informative)
According to this report no Chinese city gets into the top 10 most polluted....
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world... [ibtimes.co.uk]
According to this 1 Xi'an is the worst in the world. With Phoenix being the worst American city at 97th worst, LA is 107th, London 171st
http://www.numbeo.com/pollutio... [numbeo.com]
Re:And it's not even in the top 10 worst. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this report no Chinese city gets into the top 10 most polluted.... http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world... [ibtimes.co.uk]
According to this 1 Xi'an is the worst in the world. With Phoenix being the worst American city at 97th worst, LA is 107th, London 171st http://www.numbeo.com/pollutio... [numbeo.com]
Xi'an makes one list but not the other, that just comes to show how reliable these lists are. The rule of thumb here is that when you are going to work and you find yourself wishing that you could echolocate like a bat to find the subway station because you can't see your hand in front of your face due to smog then it's time to consider moving to a cleaner place. The sad thing is that many cities in China fit that description because of the fact that for decades the Chinese Govt. has not cared one bit about environmental issues because it lowered production costs. There are free market pundits in the west who'd like us to follow the Chinese example based on the premise that environmental regulations get in the way of companies making profit. If you want to know where that leads take a look at China. However, the Chinese public is getting fed up with this and that explosion in Tianjin is just the latest drop into the cup of their dissatisfaction (It's absolutely unbelievable that those firemen were sent into a hazardous chemicals storage facility without knowing what was kept there, simply because even the facilities operators didn't know). It will be interesting to watch what happens when that cup fills up and flows over.
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So if the measurement includes natural dust, then Xi'an goes way up in the pollution list. I imagin
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Xi'an makes one list but not the other, that just comes to show how reliable these lists are.
I'm sure the data from numbeo is reliable, it just fluctuates. If I focus on Northern America, then I see these numbers for Phoenix:
Mid-year 2015: 70.59 (rank 1)
2015: 68.12 (4)
Mid-year 2014: 72.49 (2)
2014: 76.75 (1)
2013: 58.05 (5)
It looks like the ibtimes.co.uk article uses data from 2008 through 2013, while the numbeo link defaults to mid-year 2015. Like you can see with Phoenix, pollution in a particular city varies year over year. Here in Phoenix we probably peak during the middle of the year because
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I live in Brisbane and have travelled extensively. Almost everywhere I go I find the pollution a shock compared to home. My first time overseas was doing the Aussie in England thing and I found the levels of air pollution in London just insane. Now, having travelled a lot more I've learnt that actually London isn't that bad compared to others. Moscow in 2007 was a pretty big shock, the density of the car traffic in central Moscow was insane and they hadn't managed to achieve the Euro 3 fuel quality leve
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Er, Europe and America used to be shitholes like that. They succeeded in cleaning them up without curbing immigration, and China itself does not have a large amount of immigration, so apparently immigration doesn't have much to do with it.
I'm not buying it (Score:2)
I've been to Beijing, and I didn't look anywhere near as cool as a two-pack-a-day smoker.
Article is a bit old, but current data is similar (Score:4, Informative)
This article is from April, and their data collection was presumably from some time before that. However, if you check the following map (updated hourly), it looks like the air is still terrible, despite China making some attempts to solve this problem:
http://aqicn.org/map/china/ [aqicn.org]
Not Falling for Beijing in the Tailpipe (Score:2)
I don't smoke Lucky Strikes, I smoke King Sized Camels.
At least it's free (Score:5, Interesting)
Cigarettes are quite expensive, so getting 40 a day for free is not that bad.
That being said, Beijing is located is a small depression and that results in all the heavier particles in the air hovering over the city instead of dispersing over a larger area.
This effect is strongest in the winter, as I experienced it when I visited the city about a decade ago. However, there are spontaneous "clearing events" when sudden winds blow away the smoke, and then the difference in the quality of the air is quite striking.
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LA has much the same problem, which is why LA smogs have become so famous. Still, they've had some success cleaning it up.
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*Shines flashlight on face and leans forward over the campfire.* But.... there was NO NICOTINE!
China pollution affects the West Coast (Score:2)
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Unfortunately China has no concept of being good neighbors to ANYBODY in regards to the environment.
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One bright side (Score:2)
It sure felt like it... (Score:1)
I was in China back in late April / early May of this year.
I was walking with my Chinese friend / interpreter late at night next to the Yalu river in Dandong, across from North Korea. It was a nice, cool evening, very refreshing.
I woke up the next morning with what felt like a very bad chest cold. Another friend bought me some Chinese cough medicine, which seemed to help a little. But shortly after, I went to Beijing, and I really did feel like my lungs were on fire! We walked around the Summer Palace,
But aren't cigarettes filtered? (Score:2)
Breathing SLC's Air Is the Equivalent of... (Score:2)
asthma in children, heart disease and cancer in adults and early onset of dementia in the elderly.
Gentleman, start your engines!
Tariffs (Score:2)
Many countries undercut our labor rates by having substandard conditions, including pollution. We should tariff such countries until they meet basic standards.
It would encourage them to both clean up, and pay realistic wages, making our products more competitive, thus reducing the trade deficit.
The Eclipse (Score:2)
I visited a major city in China several years ago, and when I stepped off the plane I looked nearly straight up and saw a copper-red moon. "Oh gee, a lunar eclipse, how cool!"
It was not an eclipse.
Lost on Planet China (J. Maarten Troost) (Score:2)
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Democrats = outlaw smoking
Republicans = smoking is a personal choice
Stay on topic please.
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Seattle is ruled by Republicans, but they still banned smoking in parks. A few years ago they banned smoking in bars, and the DINO mayor is going after blacks that own private clubs that allow smoking. He hates minorities. He might not have an R by his name, but he sure as hell acts like one. You are wrong about Republicans. They don't believe in the right to smoke.
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Seattle is ruled by Republicans...
O RLY? Since when?
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You are wrong about Republicans. They don't believe in the right to smoke.
Of course not, smoking is prole. They do however believe in the right to sell cigarettes.
Re:Capitalism is killing them (Score:5, Insightful)
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The US EPA was founded by the Nixon administration.
Re: Capitalism is killing them (Score:2)
Nixon was a moderate Republican. Just like Kennedy was a moderate Democrat. Neither could be nominated today by the batshit crazy extremists of left and right that rise up out of the fever swamp to infest the American political landscape.
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The progressives are responsible for making our air clean. The big cities in America used to look like China is now, but the EPA was created to do something about it, and has succeeded admirably.
Uhh...that depends. [sciencedaily.com] Maybe it has changed somewhat recently, but I'm quite sure it's far from perfect.
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Achieved its goals?
Tell us, how did you travel from your alternative pollution free earth? Wormhole?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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LOL, no. You sound like a victim of hate radio, wingnut blogs, or Fox News.
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"destroying your enemies with lawfare" Who are EPA's enemies? And can you please give specific examples of the EPA being used as an anti-business tool and show how the "extreme leftists" controlled it. Disband? How would that not cause environmental quality to revert?
Yeah, that's a teensy bit down from Hiller. (Score:4, Interesting)
When I lived in the Bay Area, there was a fire at a recycling plant that caused some reading to go 400, or 500 or something in Redwood City. It might have been particulates, not sure.
Yeah, that's a teensy bit down from Hiller. There was some suspicion of them not being able to handle the recycling load, and "accidentally" setting the materials on fire (the plant itself was untouched). Other theories included spontaneous combustion due to thermal rise during decomposition (only it was mostly paper).
It was particulates in the 76 or so today, due to smoke from the wild fires (which are actually pretty far away). Everyone got an emergency services robocall. Most places in China are about that, according to the monitoring mapping service (aqicn.org), but there are some that are running about double. Highest I saw was a 953 on the China/Kyrgystan border (kinda insane), and a couple real hotspots around Beijing.
I found it interesting that they shut down the San Francisco station (it must have been showing numbers that were unfavorable to San Francisco tourism). Worst in the U.S. is Medford Oregon; most other hot spots are in Washington State. There's a 229 in the Czech Republic. Russia has exactly one monitoring station; I'm going to guess it reports whatever Putin wants.
If you are interested in the world map (navigable Google Maps map), it's here (I left it centered on China):
http://aqicn.org/map/californi... [aqicn.org]