Industrial Pollution in China

Canadian scientists are mounting an intercontinental effort to measure China's impact on North America's air quality, proposing to create a network of air-testing stations around the Pacific Rim, including one atop Whistler Mountain.

The deadly effects of air pollution on China's own environment are well known.

Cities are often shrouded in toxic clouds poisoning the land and water, and experts believe as many as 400,000 Chinese die prematurely every year due to the country's industrial pollution.

An unknown question, however, is what impact China's economic boom is having on North America when the country's industrial pollution drifts eastward across the Pacific Ocean, reaching the West Coast and later the even more fragile Canadian Arctic.

While recent attention has focused on China's contribution to global warming, scientists are equally concerned about the increasing amounts of trace pollutants and heavy metals that are increasingly being detected on the West Coast.

"Basically, we are lacking a lot of data on this subject," said Hayley Hung, an Environment Canada scientist who is leading the proposal to build an intercontinental testing system.

"We're talking about having stations that would be located in Canada, China, Vietnam, Japan, Russia and the United States to see the impact of pollution in Asia on North America. It's never been done before."

China's clouds of industrial pollution are becoming so large and dense that some are visible to satellites, which have tracked their paths across the Pacific. Last April, for example, a massive cloud from northern China was monitored as it moved across South Korea, the Pacific and eventually reached North America's northwest coast.

Up to now, Canadian scientists have been unable to monitor such events in real time because they lack a system that can take weekly air samples.

The proposed network, which will cost $350,000 to set up, will enable them to collect samples regularly. It will also allow them to measure both the concentrations and the actual intercontinental journey of heavy metals, such as mercury and the so-called "dirty dozen" chemical compounds spewing out of China's coal-powered smokestacks.

The proposal is expected to be approved in the next few weeks by the International Polar Year, a global effort to spur climatic and pollution research. It is expected to be operating within months.

It will also enable scientists to measure any increase in pollutants in the Arctic and identify to what degree a booming Asia is affecting that region.

"The Asian Pacific region presently represents the world's fastest growing economy," say the scientists in their proposal.

"It is, thus, important to obtain an estimate of the relative impact of chemical release from this growing giant on the sensitive ecosystem and the health of the people in the Arctic region.

"With limited information on emission and usage of these chemicals in the Asian Pacific region, it has been very difficult, if not impossible, to determine the relative contribution and impact of pollutant release from this region versus those originated from the Eurasian and North American continents in general to the vulnerable Arctic."