Zhejiang's choking days rise by 20 times
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E-mail Xinhua, December 12, 2013
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Zhejiang Province, an economic powerhouse in the Yangtze River Delta, now has over 20 times the number of hazy days as it did 50 years ago. |
In the past 13 years, the number of gasoline cars in the province has increased 12-fold.
Planning and construction of the urban transportation network has failed to meet the surging number of cars. Cars in traffic jams release four to five times more emissions than running cars do, said Jin.
But it is not just vehicles.
Industrial pollution is also blamed for the smog, Jin added.
Both industrialization and car ownership have led to Zhejiang's serious air pollution issue in the past two to three decades, he said.
"It is critical we are aware of this serious environmental issue," said Jin.
Both central and local governments are trying to cut pollution by accelerating "green transport" and implementing controls on industry.
Zhejiang also suffers from air pollution around the province as industrial sewage and pollutants caused by winter heating in northern China have flowed into Zhejiang.
The province's island cities of Zhoushan and Shengsi suffer from hazy weather even though they have small populations, few vehicles and little industrial pollution.
"According to our analysis, it is likely that their hazy weather is caused by a dust haze belt from northern China," said Jin.
"The continuous hazy weather in north China's Hebei Province and nearby regions are characteristics of cross-regional pollution," said Guo Bin, deputy director with the Environmental Science and Engineering College of Hebei University of Science and Technology.
Pollutants float in the air and overlap with those in other regions, which spreads pollution to vast areas of China, he said.
The State Council has vowed to restrict high energy-consuming and polluting industries, adjust energy structure and enhance control of PM 2.5 in regions suffering from serious air pollution.
It set a goal of reducing key industries' emissions of major air pollutants by at least 30 percent by the end of 2017.
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