For more than 15 years, the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars to clean up its deadly air pollution, focusing intensely on reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants.
For more than 15 years, the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars to clean up its deadly air pollution, focusing intensely on reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants.
These efforts have succeeded in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, but extreme pollution events are still a regular wintertime occurrence and experts estimate that more than 1 million people die per year in China from particulate air pollution.
New research from Harvard may explain why. It shows that a key to reducing extreme wintertime air pollution may be reducing formaldehyde emissions rather than sulfur dioxide.
The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Read more at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Image: Beijing with haze and without haze. (Credit: Image courtesy of Jonathan M. Moch/Harvard SEAS)
