Air Pollution | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Throughout Asia air pollution is a significant threat to human health and the environment. Industrial emissions from fossil fuel use constitute the bulk of the pollutants released into the atmosphere, but forest fires and the combustion of biomass fuels also add pollutants. Combating air pollution is difficult because it requires action on many different levels, from upgrading household stoves to reducing regional emissions to battling global climate change internationally. Scientists warn that, if current trends continue, by 2025 three times as many people in Asia will suffer poor health due to air pollution as did in 1990.

Industrial development in the past century was powered largely by fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. Used to generate electricity, drive industrial processes, and send automobiles down the road, fossil fuels release sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and tiny particulates of partially combusted fuel into the atmosphere. Even the cleanest fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide emissions, formed when carbon in the fuel combines with atmospheric oxygen. Industrial air pollution is a global problem but is nowhere more serious than in Asia, where fossil fuel consumption has risen by a factor of 20 in the past half-century.

The local effects of air pollution have been most severe in cities undergoing rapid industrialization and population growth. Of the fifteen cities worldwide suffering from the worst concentrations of air pollutants, twelve are in the Asia-Pacific region. Beijing, Chongqing, and other Chinese cities have the highest concentrations of sulfur dioxide, joined by Jakarta, Manila, and Seoul on the list of those with high levels of particulate matter. High levels of air pollution have meant increased rates of bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer, and infant mortality. A World Bank study attributes some 67,200 premature deaths and over a half-million cases of chronic bronchitis in Asia to urban air pollution.

Industrial air pollution also takes a toll on the environment. The area around Guilin, China, famous for its mountain scenery, has been especially hard hit. Not only has pollution from Guilin's factories obscured the mountain in haze, but the region's limestone geological formations are being eroded by the acidic sulfur dioxide. Acid rain, another by-product of atmospheric sulfur dioxide, damages forests and aquatic life far from the source of the pollution. While Japan has made significant progress in reducing its own air pollution, it now contends with acid rain originating in China and Korea. Japan, southern China, mountainous areas of Southeast Asia, and southwestern India all have soils and vegetation particularly sensitive to acidification.

Globally the most significant environmental changes may be due to emissions of so-called greenhouse gasses, which trap heat inside the atmosphere. Trace amounts occur naturally in the atmosphere, but their concentrations have risen exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. The increase of carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, has been linked directly to increased use of fossil fuels and the loss of forests, whose trees and other flora absorb carbon dioxide. In 1990 international scientists predicted that an overall rise in temperatures, sea levels, and severe weather could be expected if greenhouse-gas emissions were not curbed. The consequences could be especially severe for Asia if climatic changes lead to reduced crop yields or the inundation of heavily populated coastal areas.

In the developing countries of Asia the highest levels of air pollution occur inside homes where biomass fuels like wood, grasses, or animal dung are used for cooking and heating. Three-quarters of India's households rely on biomass fuels. Smoke from these fuels contains many harmful chemicals and compounds. Women and children, who are in the home the most, have the greatest exposure; they risk developing respiratory infections, lung cancer, and eye damage. Half of India's cases of tuberculosis may be attributed to respiratory damage from cooking smoke.

Forest fires were the source of the air pollution that blanketed much of Indonesia and its neighbors in 1997 and 1998. An unprecedented number of fires decimated tropical forests on the island of Kalimantan (Borneo) during a two-year drought linked to the El Niño southern oscillation, a periodic shift in global weather systems. The disaster was exacerbated by the expansion of fire-prone oil-palm plantations. Some 12.5 million people in the surrounding region were exposed to hazardous air pollution levels, forcing the Indonesian president to apologize officially to Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. The fires released as much carbon into the atmosphere as a year of fossil fuel use by Western Europe. As with other major forest fires, such as the giant blaze on the Chinese-Siberian border a decade earlier, the severest impacts were on the health and livelihood of the local community and surrounding natural environment.

Action to reduce air pollution is underway at many levels in Asia. While much attention has been given to international assistance programs promoting the use of expensive new technologies to remove pollutants from atmospheric emissions, the most successful strategies call for substituting cleaner fuel sources and using fuels more efficiently. China has long supported a program to popularize the use of biogas digesters; biomass fuels processed in these devices are converted to cleaner-burning methane gas, leaving a rich mixture of compounds useful as fertilizer. Elsewhere, biomass fuels are being replaced in the home by coal briquettes, natural gas, or electricity from power plants. For national power generation, China and India are taking steps to limit the use of coal high in sulfur, substituting other energy sources such as hydroelectric power, though these have their own environmental and social consequences.

The efficiency with which fossil fuels are used in Asia varies widely. Japan's fuel use is now among the most efficient in the world, but elsewhere in the region outdated technologies in factories and vehicles burn fuels less efficiently and pollute more. Modernization may help reduce pollution levels, an outcome especially critical in the area of greenhouse gasses. Coal-dependent China and India are among the world's biggest sources of carbon dioxide, but, pointing to their low per-capita emissions compared with Japan, Korea, or other more developed countries, they argue that it would be unfair for international treaties to cap their emissions at current levels.

Air pollution poses ongoing challenges to human health and environmental quality in Asia, especially with Asia's growing economic development and increased fossil fuel consumption. The effects of air pollution are felt in the home, in rapidly developing urban areas, and across national boundaries. Current trends are alarming, but concerted efforts may reduce the damage air pollution causes to the people and environment of Asia.

Bhopal; Forest Industry—Southeast Asia

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