A recent study in Chinese cities found a potential link between a hazardous mix of air pollutants and death rates. These findings point to the need for a new approach to assessing the dangers of urban smog in fast-industrializing parts of the developing world.
The hazes can be choking and can reduce visibility at noon to a few tens of yards. Fumes belch from factory chimneys, coal-fired power plants, heating systems in apartment blocks, and millions of road vehicles. When the weather traps smog in the streets, city hospital admissions soar and the morgues fill.
The foul air of dozens of fast-expanding cities across China contains cocktails of toxic contaminants unprecedented in the range of pollutants they contain at high concentrations. Now, new research into these swirling maelstroms of gases and tiny particulates suggests that they may be incubating chemical reactions that compound the health effects in ways not seen before – effects that doctors say are cutting five years off the expected lifespan of half a billion people in northern China…read more.
Fuente: YALE E360