Coal Fired Electicity Producing Plants in China Are Dangerous

¶ … poor air quality in major cities in China has increasingly been viewed as a serious health threat -- and an economic problem as well -- over the past few years. The major culprit for this persistent pollution has been identified as coal-fired power plants, but auto emissions and factories are also contributors to this environmental problem. It has gotten so bad in Beijing, China, that on Tuesday December 8, Chinese leaders triggered a "red alert" closing schools, suspending factories, and keeping one-half of the vehicles off the streets (Mader, 2015). What are the health-related issues brought on by this hazardous smog in China? This question will be addressed in this paper.

China's Air Pollution Kills up to 500,000 People Each Year

According to Chen Zhu, the former Chinese Health Minister -- who is a professor of medicine and a leading molecular biologist in China -- the terrible smog that envelops Chinese cities is responsible for the premature deaths of between 350,000 and 500,000 citizens a year (Moore, 2014). Zhu reached his conclusions based on research conducted by the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning.

Another survey ("the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study") claimed that airborne particles "smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010 alone" (Moore, p. 2). Particles that are 2.5 microns "are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream," Jonathan Kaiman writes in The Guardian.

Kaiman quotes Chinese scientists that claim the horrible levels of toxic air pollution " ... is now so bad that it resembles a nuclear winter, slowing photosynthesis in plants and potentially wreaking havoc on the country's food supply."

A professor at the China Agricultural University's College of Water Resources, He Dongxian, demonstrated the toxicity of the air pollution by planting one group of chili and tomato seeds under artificial lab conditions, and another in a Beijing greenhouse. The seeds planted in the lab were sprouting in 20 days but in the Beijing greenhouse they took more than two months (Kaiman, p. 1).

The risk that heavy air pollution presents to Chinese citizens is the " ... fourth biggest threat to the health of Chinese people," Zhu explained. The first three in the category of threats are heart disease, dietary risk, and smoking tobacco (Moore, p. 2). Because of the pollutants that result from burning coal (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and particulate matter), heavy air pollution in Chinese cities is creating an enormous health problems which can only be reduced when China switches to clearer alternative energy sources.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report that typically a coal-fired electrical generating plant releases about 170 pounds of mercury per year; just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury put into a 25-acre lake " ... can make the fish unsafe to eat"; that's how dangerous mercury is on human health.

Edward Wong writes in The New York Times that air pollution in China causes 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, echoing the study reported earlier in this paper. The World Health Organization estimates that there were 1.3 million premature deaths worldwide because of air pollution in 2011 (Wong, 2013).