After checking professor's comments on my HCP rough draft, I then corrected these error in my draft and composed a new HCP draft. 

Kevin Chen

James R. Goebel

Writing 39C

05 February, 2017

Air Pollution in Northern China: History of a Crisis

I. Introduction:

China has been troubled with severe air pollution and haze in the last few decades. Especially in recent years, air pollution has been so severe in Northern cities in China. The severe air pollution in China shares some similarities with Los-Angeles-type smog in 1970s and London Fog of 1952. While, most cities in China are suffering from PM_2.5, which is a particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers, Northern cities in China have more severe air pollution compared to other regions due to the increase of fossil fuel-dependent industries, coal heating in the winter, the increase of vehicles usage, and the lack of ventilation and precipitation. As air pollution began to be more visible and caused health problems for a long time, the Chinese government started to adjust the air pollution regulation. This essay seeks to historically contextualize air pollution in China, especially in Northern China. The historical scope of my analysis will span from 1970s, when China industrialization began and then haze became a particularly serious problem in East Asia in general, to the present date of air quality crisis in China. Using scholarly sources from the fields of environmental sciences, political science, and air pollution regulation, I conclude this paper by considering the regulations necessary to deal with this crisis. Figure 1 shows the terrible air quality in Beijing in winter of 2013 (The Wall Street Journal).

 

Figure 1. The city with severe fog-haze in Beijing. A man wears a mask on Tiananmen Square in thick haze in Beijing

II. China’s Industrialization

From the year of 1978, China began the policy of Reform and Opening, and the economy has been developing rapidly after that. With the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and economy growth, China gradually faces the problem of fog-haze pollution. In an article on the impact of air pollution on Chinese life expectancy, Yuyu Chen and his team of researchers argue that, “ambient concentrations of total suspended particulates (TSPs) between 1981–2001 were more than double China’s National Annual Mean Ambient Air Quality Standard of 200 µg/m³ and five times the level that prevailed in the United States before the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970” (Chen, el. 3). People could find that ambient concentrations of total suspended particulates were higher in Northern China during 1981 to 2001 than the TSPs in the United States in 1970. Since the year of 1991, when haze has begun to be a particularly acute problem in East Asia, China was also troubled with the air problem of sand storm and haze. In recent decades, the air pollution of fog and haze becomes severe in Northern China. Historically, severe fog and haze happened in Britain and the United States (Chen, el. 5). Northern China’s severe air pollution has some similarities with Los-Angeles-type smog in 1970s, and London Fog of 1952.

PM_2.5 is a particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, which is also a mixture of solids and liquid droplets floating in the air (Zhang and Jonathan 4). Researchers of Chinese Academy of Science found that “industrial pollution is the biggest source of PM_2.5 problems” (Zhang, et al. 5328). There are many other fossil fuels industries located in Northern China. For example, in Shanxi Province, the central point of Northern China, there are a lot of coal enterprises. The mining process and transportation of coal all generate the particulate matters and emitted into air. Meanwhile, there are some big oil fields in Northeast such as Daqing oil field (located in Heilongjiang Province), and Liaohe oil field in Liaoning province. The heavy industries’ development caused the release of more air pollution. At the last few years, annual coal production has increased from 2.5 billion tons to 3.6 billion tons in China as shown in Figure 2 (Hu and Jiang 747).

 

Figure 2. Increase in coal production output in China

III. China’s Geography and the Effects of PM_2.5 on Public Health

Coal burning was generally recognized as one of main causes of smog in London Fog of 1952. In China, coal burning is also regarded as the major source of air pollution (Zhang, et al. 5326). Figure 2 demonstrates the separation of Northern and Southern China by the Chinese government. Huai River and Qingling Mountain is the line. Chinese government chose to provide complimentary coal for home and office heating in the North. Yuyu Chen and his team of researchers also find out that the air pollution of PM_2.5 is higher, and life expectancies is lower in the North (Chen, el. 2). Mostly in Northern China, the heating system is not energy-efficient. Heat has been provided by coal-burning heat-only boilers, which are “inefficient in energy usage compared to electricity, gas, and oil heating systems in the industrial countries” (Zhang, et al. 5326). This kind of flawed boilers releases three kinds of pollutant: total suspended particulates (TSP), CO_2, and NO_x (Zhang, et al. 5327).

Figure 3 The cities shown are the locations of capital cities of 34 provinces. Cities of north of the solid line were covered by the home heating policy

Meanwhile, the topography of North China traps the polluted air. It is usually dry in Northern China. The wind from Siberia helps to blow haze away, and it is how typical cities such as Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Xingtai, and others in Hebei Province have clean air in winter. The increasing air pollution of fog and haze also causes a lot of problems to public health. PM_2.5 has been associated with various adverse health effects, such as pathophysiological biomarkers of adverse cardiopulmonary events, respiratory symptoms, and reduced lung function (Zhang and Samet 5). Table 1 shows the health effects and WHO guidelines about particulate matter.

 

Pollutant	Source types and major sources	Health effects	WHO guidelines
Particulate matter	Primary and secondary-	Respiratory symptoms, decline in lung function, exacerbation of respiratory and cardiovascular disease (e.g., asthma), mortality	PM10
	Anthropogenic: burning of fossil fuel, wood burning, natural sources (e.g., pollen), conversion of precursors (NOx, SOx, VOCs)		Annual mean: 20 µg/m3
	Biogenic: dust storms, forest fires, dirt roads		24-hour mean: 50 µg/m3
			PM2.5
			Annual mean: 10 µg/m3
			24-hour mean: 25 µg/m3

Table 1. Source, health effects, and World Health Organization guidelines on major ambient air pollutants. Journal of Thoracic Disease

IV. Existing and Future Policies and Regulation

With the increasing health problem among citizens, China has developed and implemented a series of measures, action plan, and policies to tackle the serious situation, including standards, regulations, and laws that have been modified and updated, formulated and promulgated (Chai et al. 80). Chinese government incorporated stringent goals of air quality improvement into the 11^th FYP (2006-2010), such as the 20% reduction in energy intensity (Gao, et al 149). In the year of 2010, the China State Council issued the “Guiding Opinions on Pushing Forward the Joint Prevention and Control of Air Pollution to Improve Regional Air Quality” to formulate a framework of standards, regulations and policies, and to establish a regional level joint prevention and control system (Gao, et al 149). The Chinese State Council released the “atmospheric Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan” on September 10, 2013, which aims to reduce PM_2.5 in the Jing-Jin-Ji area by 25% by 2017. The National Development and Reform Commission along with the Ministry of Environmental Protection also released the “Coordinated Development of Ecological Environment Protection Plan in Jing-Jin-Ji Area” on December 30, 2015 (Sun, et al. 2). Those plans released by government show the intention of reducing air pollution in Northern China. Since 2015, the government has halted many companies and heavy industries to open because of the releasing problem. A national air quality monitoring system was also set up accompanied by, implementation of clean production process, controls on coal consumption, installations of flue gas desulfurization in coal-burning power plants (Gao, et al. 152). While the problem is, many interventions have only temporary effects (Gao, et al 149). And the key challenge for China is how to bring sustainable clean energy and consisting measures to conduct for a long time.

China should pay much more attention in fighting air pollution since the haze is still severe in recent few years. As we talked above, many factories were halted by government to reduce the particulate matters releasing, people will face a problem of economic development in prevention, so that the scientific policies are necessary. Since air pollutants move from area to area (such as the haze in Southern cities in China), measures should be consistent among different cities. Besides, international contributions to knowledge transfer, technology innovation, and even financial support can help China’s government to do better in air pollution (Gao, et al. 155). China’s government could seek help and experiences from Los-Angeles-type smog happened in 1970s and London Fog of 1952.

V. Conclusion

In conclusion, this paper explores the air pollution-haze in China from the end of 1970^th. For recent decades, China has been troubled in the sever fog-haze especially in North China due to industrialization, China’s heating system, and China’s Geography. Although Chinese government implemented policies, regulations, and a lot other efforts to cope with the problem of air pollution, it seems very difficult to make success in short time. China’s government could seek lessons and experiences from Los-Angeles-type smog happened in 1970s and London Fog of 1952 to check out how Britain and the United States cope with the issue of air pollution. China also needs to make policies and take actions based on scientific points, experiences, cooperation, and comprehensiveness to cope with the air pollution in future.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Almond, Douglas, Yuyu Chen, Michael Greenstone, and Honbin Li. “Winter Heating or Clean Air? Unintended impacts of China’s Huai River Policy.” American Economic Review, 99(2), pp.184-190.

Chai, Fahe, Jian Gao, Zhenxing Chen, Shulan Wang, Yuechong Zhang, Jingqiao Zhang, Hefeng Zhang, Yaru Yun, and Chun Ren. “Spatial and Temporal Variation of Particulate Matter and Gaseous Pollutants in 26 Cities in China.” Journal of Environmental Science, vol. 26, no. 1, 2014, pp. 75-82.

Chen, Yuyu, Avraham Ebenstein, Michael Greenstone, and Hongbin Li. “Evidence on the Impact of Sustained Exposure to Air Pollution on Life Expectancy from China’s Huai River Policy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, volume. 110, no. 32, 2013, pp 12936-12941.

Gao, Jinghong, and Woodward Alistair. “Haze, public health and mitigation measures in China: A review of the current evidence for further policy response.” Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 578, 2017, pp148-157.

Hu, David, Juyuan Jiang. “A Study of Smog Issues and PM_2.5 Pollutant Control Strategies in China.” Journal of Environmental Protection, vol 4, 2013, 746-752.

Sun, Yele, Chen Chen, Yingjie Zhang, Weiqi Xu, et. “Rapid Formation and Evolution of an Extreme Haze Episode in Northern China During Winter 2015.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, volume 11, no.9, 2014, pp 8909–8923.

The Wall Street Journal. “China Internet Users Scream for Clean Air Act.” The Wall Street Journal. 2013.

Zhang, Junfeng and Jonathan Samet. “Chinese Haze Versus Western Smog: lessons Learned.” Journal of Thoracic Disease, volume 7, no.1, 2015, pp 3–13.

Zhang, Dongyong, Juanjuan Liu, and Bingjun Li. “Tackling Air Pollution in China-What Do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON.” Sustainability, vol 6, 2014, pp 5322-5338

 

In the final draft of my HCP, I did a lot of revision such as the grammar, the structure rearrangement, and most importantly, I inserted many pictures, figures and tables. However, I forgot to cite some multi-modal resources. Based on these changes, my final score of the HCP is 78, which was not good but I felt good for myself because I could avoid making same mistake in future. There were still a lot of problems in my HCP research paper, but at least I learned some important points in my research paper. The first one is the structure. A rational and logical structure was important, because it could help me make the whole essay more clear. Readers could also understand what I was talking about in the paper. The second was the use of multi-modal sources such as maps, graphs, and etc. Multi-modal sources could make the research paper more professional and believable. The last thing was the MLA formatting. Although my final HCP draft did not receive a high grade, but with these improvements, I believed that I could do better job in the later work in this course.