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Progress slashing unhealthy ozone in the western United States has largely been undone by pollution wafting across the Pacific from China, according to a study published Monday. Scientists have long suspected this might explain why ozone levels along the U.S. west coast remained constant despite a significant local reduction in ozone-forming chemicals. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, is the first to make the case using satellite observations coupled with computer models of how air-borne molecules travel in the lower atmosphere, the authors said. “The dominant westerly winds blew this air pollution straight across to the United States,” explained lead...

Proving that China’s fight against pollution has moved decisively into the realm of parody, bags containing mountain air were shipped into one particularly smog-addled city over the weekend. No, it wasn’t a scene from Spaceballs. According to the organizer, a Henan-based travel company, 20 bright blue bags of air were shipped to Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan province, as a special treat for residents. The air originated from Laojun Mountain, some 120 miles away from the city, and was brought as part of a promotional gimmick to show oxygen-deprived city residents what they’re missing.

The pollution that reaches the West Coast is largely a by-product of production of consumer goods for the U.S. and Europe. It’s the first study to measure exactly how much of the Chinese pollution reaching the U.S. West Coast is from the production of items for the U.S., like cell phones, televisions, and electronics. “We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” said U.C. Irvine Earth system scientist Steve Davis, a co-author of the study. “Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’...

Measurement 'literally beyond index' Despite glowing words of praise from admirers in the neo-commie Obama Administration, by any measure -social security, health care, unemployment benefits, whatever- the booming China of today hasn't got much to do with socialism. Indeed, government handouts are far more prevalent in the US, and modern Chinese 'communist' leadership -who run a tight ship and enjoy a budget surplus- have come right out and said that American entitlement culture (with Obama as it's primary cheerleader) is precisely what's destroying us. So tell me who's the capitalists now: the Chinese may live under an oppressive dictatorship, but they learned not to restrain...

October 14, 2009, the 30th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.”

Large chemical plants, backbone of the country’s industrial development, are built in China’s rural areas, close to small villages, where each year deaths due to cancer increase. The government denounces the rise in cases linked to industrial waste but refuses to close down the plants or move the villages. (DAQING) – Since the mid-1990s, a strong ammonia odour has permeated homes in Daqing village, Heilongjiang province, north eastern China and has not abandoned it since.  It comes from a petrol-chemical plant built on the outskirts of the village, which has caused the death of many villagers since its inauguration.  This...

(LESHAN, China) -- A few years back, the Leshan Giant Buddha started to weep. Or so some locals imagined when black streaks appeared on the rose-colored cheeks of the towering 7th-century figure, hewn from sandstone cliffs in the forests of southern China. They worried they had angered the religious icon. The culprit, it turned out, was the region's growing number of coal-fired power plants. Their smokestacks spew toxic gases into the air, which return to earth as acid rain. Over time, the Buddha's nose turned black and curls of hair began to fall from its head. "If this continues, the...

(HONG KONG) — Batman might cut a superhuman figure as he fights off evil-doers to save the world, but Hong Kong's polluted harbour is, apparently, one death-defying stunt too far. Producers shooting the next Batman movie have been forced to cut one scene involving the caped crusader -- played by Christian Bale -- jumping out of a plane into the city's famed Victoria Harbour. According to the South China Morning Post, producers felt the poor water quality was just too dangerous for the action hero when shooting for part of the film takes place here in the coming week. Citing...

Summary: China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms. China's environmental problems are mounting. Water pollution and water scarcity are burdening the economy, rising levels of air pollution are endangering the health of millions of Chinese, and much of the country's land is rapidly turning into...

(VICTORIA) - Harmful pesticides, pollutants and other chemicals from Asia may be landing on Vancouver Island as they float to the Arctic, says a professor at Royal Roads University. Matt Dodd, head of the school's environmental science program, wants to install 20 specialized air-pollutant monitoring stations to see what levels of persistent organic pollutants and PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls - register on the southern Island. "We've done work in the Arctic and done work in China at the source, and now we are trying to find out if [pollution] stops in-between," said Dodd. Dodd proposes to build the pollution catchers...

(BEIJING) - Chinese joint ventures with global corporations such as Pepsi-Cola, Samsung, 3M and GM are among 100 multinational companies on an updated blacklist of water polluters, according to a non-governmental organization. The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs has compiled a list of water polluters based on government data since 2004 and publishes it at www.ipe.org.cn. The 2006 report listed 33 offenders. Appearing on the latest list are foreign brands well known to Chinese consumers, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Kao. It also reveals pollution caused by some global chemical giants, such as DuPont, Degussa and...

Beijing's overall air quality improved during the four-day test period ahead of next August's Olympic Games in which more than a million cars each day were barred from the roads, according to the Beijing Environment Protection Monitoring Center. A police officer stops a car with an even-numbered license plate on a main thoroughfare in Beijing during the first of a four-day air quality experiment for the Olympics, August 17, 2007. [Xinhua]  The test resulted in the removal of cars from roads in downtown Beijing and the air quality was classified as "fairly good" for the duration of the four days. "The index of inhalable particular matter...

Prayers for strong winds look set to become a major component of Beijing's Olympic preparations after a traffic-reduction trial failed to shift the smog that hangs over the city. More than a million cars were taken off the roads for the four-day test period, but there was no improvement in the air quality, according to city officials. Yesterday the skies above Beijing were the same dirty grey shade as when the test started on Friday. As of Sunday the air quality ranking had not budged from level two on China's five-tier scale, in which level one represents clear unpolluted skies....

(Beijing) - It was the frugal minicar that lured the Liu family to the showroom, but it was the full-size sedan that hooked them. Like countless other first-time auto buyers in China, the Lius were moving up in the world, and getting four wheels with plenty of steel was a key part of that process. "A car! This means so much to us," said Liu Yang, while her husband, Liu Yue, fiddled with the dashboard of the Chery Eastar sedan that they were about to buy in a showroom in suburban north Beijing. The biggest car-buying boom in world history...

(HONG KONG) -- Just as growing numbers of newly affluent Chinese are planning to buy the status symbol they seek most, along comes a spoilsport government with a plan to limit the number of cars on the roads. Beijing today, Shanghai and other cities tomorrow? The central government is enforcing a test run this week of a plan to take more than 1 million cars off Beijing's roads. The object is to see how effective it will be in cleaning the capital's filthy air for China's "green" Olympics in August next year. It's a desperate measure in a country that...

(BEIJING) - Waste water dumped by factories into a river in southwest China has poisoned and killed about 40,000 kg (88,180 lb) of fish, media said on Tuesday. Eighty government officials went door to door in Chongan town, Guizhou province, to warn villagers not to eat, sell or transport the fish, state radio and news portal www.sina.com.cn reported. Dead fish were found floating on a 5-km (3-mile) stretch of the murky and foul-smelling river on August 10, the media said, adding it would take another four to five days to clear them away. Officials blamed the deaths on upstream factories...

(Beijing)--Facing deteriorating water quality, Hubei Province in central China has banned the booming pearl farming in all its lakes, rivers and reservoirs, the local government said. Pearl farms have covered a total area of 32,123 acres in the province, and the annual output has exceeded 400 tonnes, a government spokesman said on Saturday. Some farmers resorted to pesticides and manure to farm the pearl oysters, which has caused swathes of algae to bloom in the water, and turned the water stinky, he said. The government said it would not approve new applications to establish such pearl farms, and has ordered...

The world's most inclusive sporting event, the Olympics, is expected to take place in the Chinese capital of Beijing on August 8-24, 2008. On Wednesday night, dignitaries and sports fans from across China and the rest of the world gathered in front of the Chinese National Museum at Tiananmen Square in Beijing for a colorful ceremony to celebrate the one-year countdown to the games. Fireworks lit up the sky prompting all-night celebrations and merry-making. Beijing believes it is ready for the 2008 Olympics. It has already spent billions of dollars on new sports infrastructures, roads, subways, leisure venues, etc. But...

(BEIJING) - For millennia, China's great rivers have snaked their long, meandering courses across the country, providing the life-blood for Chinese civilization: water. Along the banks of the Yellow River to the north and the Yangtze to the south, 5,000 years of history and culture have unfolded, with agriculture flourishing in an otherwise inhospitable terrain and trade bringing prosperity and dynamism in its wake. But the effects of severe pollution, large-scale damming and climate change are combining to spell catastrophe for the rivers, with deeply worrying implications for the millions of Chinese who continue to depend on them. Ten percent...

Standing on a soccer field before a match as the national anthem plays is always a breathtaking experience for Canadian goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc. But when LeBlanc, 27, and her national teammates were training in Beijing in April and May, it was the city's polluted air that had them choked up. "You get over there, it's different," LeBlanc said. "You find it a bit more difficult to breathe or you find it's almost like there's phlegm in your throat." While the team was in Beijing, the city's air quality was measured as high as 210, eight times worse than the air...