Japan looks west and holds its breath as Chinese pollution heads its way

[Aya]

China's pollution crisis is worse than it has ever been before. Now people are wearing protective masks and buying cans of fresh air that are getting very popular in Beijing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/china-pollution-cars-air-problems-cities_n_2589294.html#slide=2047103

What's worse, the Japanese main stream media is keep talking about how the China's polluted air is going to arrive in the country and affect people's health and so on, by showing people wearing masks, looking very concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7AL2CZi8pk

How ironic is this? As a result, people who are watching the Japanese mainstream news keep failing to see the horrific situation that has been occurred inside of their country. If people could see the radiation in to their own eyes, I imagine that situation could have been a lot different..., or not.

The choking pollution that has shrouded large parts of the mainland is moving east to Japan, threatening to push levels of health-threatening PM2.5 particles there beyond World Health Organisation health standards.

Japanese computer simulations show the fine air particulates could reach 40 micrograms per cubic metre today or tomorrow and cause smog in parts of western Japan such as Nagasaki.

Dr Toshimasa Ohara, head of the National Institute of Environmental Studies' Centre for Regional Environmental Research, conceded this figure was very low by Chinese standards, as cities such as Beijing often measure PM2.5 levels in the hundreds. But 40 was twice the level generally seen in Japanese cities this time of year and higher than the 25 micrograms level set by the WHO.

Ohara said this had raised concerns among Japanese, and complaints had been growing louder in recent years as China's air pollution worsened. Some fear the problem shows little sign of abating as China's economy continues to grow rapidly on the back of heavy industry and development.

Much of eastern China remained smoggy yesterday, with poor visibility stranding tens of thousands of air travellers. More than 100 flights in and out of Beijing Capital International Airport were delayed or cancelled.

The conditions may improve today with the arrival of an Arctic cold front, but while those winds would come as a blessing to China, they could be a curse to neighbours such as South Korea and Japan, Ohara said. Pollution from Chinese coal-fired power plants, factories and cars would be blown far into the Pacific Ocean.

"To Japan, winter is not the worst season [for air pollution]," he said. "In the spring, the high pressure systems on the continent can pump a lot more pollutants out of China."

But some mainland researchers disagree with their Japanese counterparts about the pollution threat to Japan.

Dr Wang Yuesi , a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said the impact of Chinese pollutants on Japan would be too small to matter. "Japan is a long, narrow strip of islands. The entire country would not catch many pollutants with such a landscape. Most of the pollutants end up in the ocean. It shouldn't concern the people in Japan," he said.

Ohara said the impact varied across different regions, being higher in the western part of Japan and lower in the east. "We have definitive proof. The challenge is getting a precise estimate on the severity of the issue."

Scientists studying trans-boundary pollution in Asia are also struggling due to insufficient pollution data from China, according to Ohara.

Without the direct data, non-Chinese researchers can use only indirect ways to estimate China's pollution, such as monitoring monthly energy consumption, the increase in the number of cars being bought and used, and the capacity of power plants.

Beijing and Tokyo should work out a united mechanism to protect the environment in the Asia-Pacific region, Ohara said.

Japan could also take steps to address the problem at its source.

"Japanese politicians should push for the migration of clean production technology from Japan to China," Ohara said.

 

[Aya]

Someone found this situation as another business opportunity...

A Chinese tycoon has taken it upon himself to fight China’s air-pollution problem with a tongue-in-cheek campaign: soda-pop-size cans of fresh air.

Chen Guangbiao, a Chinese entrepreneur and philanthropist, has launched a line of fresh-air soft-drink cans that retail for about 80¢ and come in a variety of “flavors,” including, according to the Huffington Post, “pristine Tibet” and “post-industrial Taiwan.”

“I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: don’t just chase GDP growth, don’t chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment,” Chen told Reuters.

(MORE: The Scariest Environmental Fact in the World)

Air pollution is measured in terms of PM 2.5, or particulate matter 2.5 micrometers in diameter, which are absorbed by the lungs and can cause heart and lung disease, according to Reuters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air-quality index, which factors in PM 2.5 measurements, considers anything above 301 as hazardous.

According to a TIME story about Beijing’s record air pollution, the air quality in the country’s capital surpassed the American system for measuring pollution, which doesn’t extend above 500, hitting 866 for PM 2.5 in mid-January.

The 44-year-old entrepreneur, whose wealth is estimated at $740 million, made his fortune in the recycling business. According to the Guardian, he plans to give away his fortune before his death. The fresh-air cans Chen handed out on Wednesday had a caricature of the philanthropist on them and included the tagline “Chen Guangbiao is a good man.”

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/01/chinese-millionaire-fights-pollution-with-fresh-air-in-a-can/#ixzz2JlootLrv

 

[lilies]

Here is an update on mindless and senseless pollution of Earth as a result of infinite business greed in China and all over the world. In USA you see the same with thousands of 'depleted Uranium'-armored tanks rotting & rusting in Tank Cemeteries.

China: Fields of working brand new Electric cars unused and mountains of brand new bicycles thrown away. These all had to include toxic paint jobs and poison-rubber and in case of cars mountains of super-toxic materials - mined and manufactured producing toxic clouds - built into just one car. There are dangerous substance regulations internationally - in the West for example - allowing only minimum amount of dangerous substances **PER PART**, meaning safety belt is one part, seat cover is another part, screws, hard assembly parts, pipes, thousands and thousands of separate little car parts that make up just one car are only allowed EACH to have only a minimum amount of dangerous substances inside them. Now multiply all the "minimum amount of dangerous substances" for those thousands of parts just one car is made of! Then you get the toxins that emanate from just one car in the summer heat or in the cold depending on at which temperature such dangerous substances SEEP OUT of those parts and go into your body by touch or vapors or toxic dust you breathing them in just by sitting in your brand new car: (or old one)
- I love that New Car Smell, mMmm!
As these toxins seeping out of those hundreds of thousands of parts these cars are made of and touch your skin and they enter your body.

For example European car safety belts were made from a critically necessary extremely durable material component, which can kill a fetus in an expectant mothers body. That's why these substances are ""MINIMIZED"". Now see the below video, how large smoke clouds and big toxic mountain of waste was created why manufacturing these cars and bicycles AND imagine the heinous amount of toxic (minimized) substances EACH of these cars and bicycles contain in EACH part!!

Just your super new rain jacket: