China's air pollution problems frequently make headlines around the world.
Isabel Hilton, editor of China Dialogue, an independent website that publishes information and debate on the environment in China, said coal is the main cause of the country's air pollution problems. Coal burning in China "produces heavy metal pollution and produces particulate pollution on a scale that is getting quite extraordinary," she said.
China is the world's largest consumer of coal, which is its main energysource, and is responsible for around half the world's coal consumption. The impacts of its reliance on coal are becoming more well known and recently there was much online discussion after an eight-year-old girl was diagnosed with lung cancer which her doctor blamed on air pollution.
According to Gray's study, while the growth of coal consumption has slowed, 570 new coal-fired plants are either being built or are planned, and if they go ahead would be responsible for a further 32,000 premature deaths each year.
In September, the Chinese government announced a plan to tackle the high levels of air pollution including for the first time measures to cut coal consumption. Under the plan, China aims to cut air pollution in some of the worst affected areas including Beijing by 2017.
Hilton said that the reductions in the plan would not be enough to make a difference within a short time frame. "It is going to be difficult to make a difference very shortly. Much more radical things will have to happen," she said.
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2020-09-15
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