The Issue of the Air Pollution in Beijing

The Issue of the Air Pollution in Beijing

Introduction

       Along with the industrial development and urban expansion in China, the domestic economy has experienced a rapid growth. However, at the same time the urban air condition is gradually being deteriorated. In fat, the air pollution problem is seriously affecting the ecological environment of human life and causing healthy problems with adverse effects. Although in recent years local governments have carried out several strategies to reduce the negative impacts of air pollution, some cities are still faced with serious environment. Beijing as the capital of China is experiencing a significant hard time due to the serious air pollution, and this paper is going to discuss the air pollution situation in Beijing.

The Reasons for Beijing’s Air Pollution

During the whole year of 2013, few sunny days can be found in Beijing, this is not caused by the bad weather, but due to the dusty air in the city. Modern studies have shown that the major reason for the cleanliness of air in Beijing is the particulate matter named PM2.5. In general, the coarse particles with the particle size between 2.5 microns and 10 microns mainly come from the road dust, while the fine particulate matter is majorly from the burning of fossil fuels such as the tail gas of motor vehicles and the volatile organic compounds. In fact, in most areas of China, especially in the northern region where the industrial manufactures concentrate in, the PM2.5 accounts for the bulk of the air suspension particle weight. On December 30th 2013, the Chinese Academy of Science published an announcement about atmospheric physics, indicating that there are six main sources for the PM2.5 in Beijing, namely the soil dust, coal, biomass burning, automobile exhaust and waste incineration, industrial pollution and secondary inorganic aerosols (Zhu 127).

In terms of the original causes of air pollution in Beijing, there are several aspects from the social and economic dimensions. First of all, the haze weather tends to appear in the autumn and winter days due to the cold air and water vapor conditions with the large-scale atmospheric circulation situation. As a result, places with mountains, valleys, plain fiver-lake regions are more likely to form fog weather. Considering the specific natural conditions of Beijing, the dusty environment blowing from Inner Mongolia usually causes haze weather in the early spring time.

Secondly, the increasing trend of haze and air pollution in recent years is caused by the unsustainable developing ways of human society. That is to say, the exhaustive exploitation of natural sources and the ignorance to utilize environmental protection technologies have caused the accumulation of hazard emissions to the atmosphere, forming the haze weather in Beijing. According to the data released by Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, in 2011 the unit energy consumption of Beijing had reached about 0.32 tons of standard oil, and the proportion ratio of coal, oil, natural gas and electricity power was 27.1:32.6:14.4:25.9. This actually had reached the basic standard in the major cities in the world. In addition, in January 2015, the primary cause of PM2.5 pollutants affecting Beijing came around the rural areas, and the second largest influence was the direct and indirect emissions from motor vehicles (Zhu 127). What was worse, as the center of the country, Beijing is attracting people from all over the nation to come into the city for working opportunities. As a result, the rapid growth of population has led to even more consumption of energy and natural sources, further generating more environmental pollution.

In addition to the economic development and industry accumulation, the regulation and monitoring of local government are not sufficient, further causing the problem of air pollution. To be specific, currently the standards of execution and legislative oversight still have some deficiency. In the past, in the daily reported air quality testing results of Beijing there were no indicators and data about PM2.5. With a sharp deterioration in air quality in Beijing and under the pressure of public opinion, the ministry of environmental protection announced in 2012 to begin to pilot PM2.5 monitoring data in the region. And in February 2012, the Beijing municipal for the first time announced PM2.5 daily average concentration. However, as to the execution standards, in February 2012, the China Meteorological Administration issued a national meteorological industry standard observation and prediction of the haze, indicating that the PM2.5 limit is 75μg/m3. This standard belongs to the scope of the least developed countries in the guidance of the World Health Organization. In this sense, even though corresponding regulations and standards have been set up, they actually have little effects to control the air conditions (Lieberthal 14).

Impacts of Air Pollution

       Due to the increasing air pollution in Beijing, both individuals and the entire society have been influenced dramatically. As to the individual citizen, people living in Beijing are faced with the diseases related to haze and air pollution. To be specific, the contaminated atmosphere would pose different negative impacts on different groups of people according to various sources of pollutants and specific meteorological conditions. In general, the air pollution would influence the healthy status of citizens from three aspects. The first channel is to enter the human body directly by people’s breathing. The second channel is to be attached with food or dissolved in water to enter the human body with diet. And the third way is to enter the human body through contacting or irritating the skins. Among all these channels, the pollutants going through breathing has the most harmful impacts on people’s health, causing the acute poisoning or even cancers (Sun 45).

       From the aspect of the entire society, air pollution has caused increasing burden on government’s financial performance, and many industries have been influenced with reduced producing rate. For example, in order to protect the environment, Beijing has limited the motor vehicles in the daytime. And when the haze pollution becomes too serious, highways and airports would be shut down for the sake of security. As a result, the logistics industry is faced with great loss due to the pause of business. What’s more, some industrial factories which manufacture industrial products are faced with more strict regulations to clean up the wastes, and their financial stress at the same time increases dramatically.

Conclusion

       On the basis of the discussion above, the air pollution in Beijing is a major concern that relates to every field of the social development. Specifically, the causes of air pollution come from several aspects, while the most important one is the energy consumption and environmental damages created by industrial development. At the same time, the increase of population in Beijing and the imbalance between rural and urban areas both add to the serious conditions of atmosphere. In terms of the negative impacts of air pollution, both individual citizen and the whole society are challenged by safety risks. As a result, to solve the problem and take actions to reduce the pollutants is very crucial for obtaining a sustainable development of human society. In practice, both the regulation of government and the individual efforts are important, and it is also useful for companies to take the responsibilities of actively protecting environment by improving technologies and reducing the manufacturing wastes.