China's Air Pollution Is Traveling To The United States

[applegrove]

China's Air Pollution Is Traveling To The United States

by Katie Valentine at Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/12/3690724/china-exporting-air-pollution/

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China’s air pollution is traveling across the Pacific Ocean and into the United States, according to a new study.

The study, published this week in Nature Geoscience, found that ozone, which can contribute to respiratory problems when inhaled, has been making its way from China to the western United States. In China, according to the study, ozone levels in the troposphere — the lowest level of the earth’s atmosphere — went up by about 7 percent between 2005 and 2010.

“The dominant westerly winds blew this air pollution straight across to the United States,” lead researcher Willem Verstraeten of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said in a statement. “In a manner of speaking, China is exporting its air pollution to the West Coast of America.”

The movement of this ozone pollution into the United States has offset about 43 percent of the western region’s efforts to reduce ozone emissions, the study found. The federal government implemented policies that decreased the production of nitrogen oxides — which, when in contact with volatile organic compounds and sunlight, form ozone — by 20 percent in the western U.S., Agence France-Presse reports. Still, the region didn’t see a major decrease in air ozone levels, and this study might point to the reason why.


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