Smog kills more than a million Chinese a year and costs 0.7 per cent of GDP

Researchers at the Chinese University in Hong Kong published a study on ground-level ozone (O3) and fine particulate in China. Industry is the main cause of both pollutants. The average concentration of PM2.5 in Chinese cities is more than twice the world average.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Air pollution kills about 1.1 million people in China each year, wiping out about 20 million tonnes of rice, wheat, maize and soybean, this according to a new study by Hong Kong’s Chinese University.

Overall, an estimated 267 billion yuan (US$ 38 billion) are lost to the Chinese economy each year in the form of early deaths and lost food production.

For lead investigator Steve Yim Hung-lam, an assistant professor in the Geography and Resources Management Department, this represents about 0.7 per cent of national GDP.

The report, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, comes at a time when China renewed its war in favour of “blue skies”.

Yim’s team analysed contributions to ground-level ozone (O3) and fine respirable particulate (PM2.5) pollution from six sectors of the economy – industrial, commercial and residential, agriculture, power generation, ground transport and “others”, such as aviation and fires.

Industry was the biggest contributor to these types of pollution, but for PM2.5, the second-largest source was the residential and commercial sector, due to the amount of dirty coal still being burned for heating in winter in parts of the country. In some big cities, road vehicles were the second biggest source. For ozone, it was the power generation sector.

For Yim, ozone is the next big problem that China will have to tackle. The latest results released in June by the joint Regional Air Quality Monitoring Network run by the governments of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong province show that average annual ozone concentrations rose by 16 per cent year on year to hit a six-year high last year.

According to the World Health Organisation, nine out of 10 people in the world breathe polluted air and seven million people die every year due to exposure to fine particles, with outdoor air pollution comprising the lion’s share.

The average concentration of PM2.5 in Chinese cities is 48 micrograms per cubic metre of air, more than double that of the 19mcg world average of 2,626 cities.

In China, smog kills more than cigarettes. In 2014, British scientific journal The Lancet published a historic article co-signed by the president of the Chinese Medical Association, Chen Zhu, a former Health minister under President Hu Jintao

For the first time, a government official acknowledged that that between 350,000 and 500,000 people died every year in the country as a result of pollution.

• china
• pollution
• environment
• ozone
• particulate
• mortality