The United States has managed to reduce the amount of air pollution it produces, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at and breathing in the air. That’s because pollution created in Asia is gradually making its way across the Pacific Ocean to the western hemisphere.
According to research published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal, up to 65 percent of the newly created smog in the U.S. has actually drifted over from Asia. The country’s western states are most vulnerable to the increase in ozone due to their proximity to the continent.
The United States has managed to reduce the amount of air pollution it produces, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at and breathing in the air. That’s because pollution created in Asia is gradually making its way across the Pacific Ocean to the western hemisphere.
According to research published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal, up to 65 percent of the newly created smog in the U.S. has actually drifted over from Asia. The country’s western states are most vulnerable to the increase in ozone due to their proximity to the continent.
The study, a collaboration between scholars and officials at Princeton University, Columbia University and the Environmental Protection Agency, studied ozone levels dating all the way back to 1980. For decades, scientists have worried that Asia’s spike in pollution could pose problems all the way to the U.S., and this longitudinal research appears to support that belief.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Care2.
Photo Credit: Thinkstock
