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Asia-Produced Ozone Making its Way to U.S., Study Finds
WASHINGTON - A new study further bolsters concerns that pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean from China and other rapidly developing Asian nations may swamp efforts to clean up the air in the Western United States and make it difficult for states and cities to meet federal standards.
A new study further bolsters concerns that pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean from China and other rapidly developing Asian nations may swamp efforts to clean up the air in the Western United States and make it difficult for states and cities to meet federal standards. The study, based on 100,000 measurements over 25 years and a computer model tracking air-flow patterns, found that during the spring, ozone from Asia reaches Washington, Oregon, California and other states west of the Rocky Mountains.
For the first time, the study links ozone in the air above the United States with Asian pollution, said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington-Bothell and one of the study's authors.
"It is possible that emissions from emerging economies like China, with relatively limited emissions controls, are outpacing reductions in the developing countries," the report concludes. It says that the Asian emissions may "hinder the USA's compliance with its own ozone air-quality standard."
Previous studies have detected such pollutants from Asia as mercury, soot and PCBs reaching the United States. A National Academy of Sciences study last year pointed to increasing unease among regulators about a growing problem.
"Any air pollutant with an atmospheric lifetime of at least three to four days may be transported across most of a continent, a week or two may get it across an ocean, a month or two can send it around the hemisphere and a year or two may deliver it anywhere on Earth," the National Academy of Sciences said last year.
The academy's new report, prepared by the National Research Council, says the problem involves not only trans-Pacific pollution but also trans-Atlantic pollution, with emissions from the United States reaching Europe. The study zeroed in on ozone, particulate matter, mercury and persistent organic pollutants, which have been tracked by ground-based monitors, airborne monitors and satellite-borne sensors.
Among the federal agencies that are interested in the issue are the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The academy called for increased "fingerprinting" of pollutants, so that it's easier to locate their sources, and more detailed studies of emission totals and the atmospheric conditions that spread the pollution.
"The relative importance of long-range pollutant contributions from foreign sources is likely to increase as nations institute stricter air-quality standards that result in tougher emission controls on domestic sources," the academy's report says.
The study on ozone from Asia, authored by an international group of scientists, appears in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature. It comes as the EPA is considering tightening ozone standards.
Ozone is the main ingredient in smog, which can cause health problems that range from burning in the eyes and throat to pulmonary inflammation and increased risk of heart attack. It's created when sunlight mixes with oxygen and nitrogen from vehicle tailpipes and other sources of combustion.
The study focused on an area two to six miles above the Earth known as the mid-troposphere. Pollution in the troposphere could affect the ground level.
While emissions of nitrous oxide, a precursor compound in ozone, have declined in the United States by about one-third since 1985, the study found that ozone levels had increased by 29 percent over the same period.
The study notes that from 2001 to 2006, ozone precursor emissions in east Asia were up 44 percent, and 55 percent in China.
"The changes we have seen over the past 25 years coincide with when China was transforming itself into an economic powerhouse," Jaffe said.
The study didn't pinpoint which Asian countries the ozone might be coming from, Jaffe said. Among the possibilities are China, India and Vietnam.
"What we can say is there has been a strong and significant increase in ozone in the mid-troposphere in the West and it doesn't seem the U.S. is contributing to the increase," said Owen Cooper, a research scientist at the University of Colorado attached to NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
Cooper said the study found that Asian emissions were adding to the ozone pollution in the Western United States, but scientists couldn't say by how much and which countries were involved.
"This is only the first step," Cooper said of the study.
The EPA, which regulates emissions through the Clean Air Act, is looking at international ozone transport, the agency said in an e-mailed statement.
"However, as the National Academy of Sciences concluded in its recent report, our current ability to fully characterize the impact of foreign sources on air quality in the United States is somewhat limited," the statement said.
The EPA said it was too soon to tell how the latest study might affect ozone standards.
18 Comments so far
Show AllMuch of Seattle's smog is Made in China like most of our imports.
well..one can put it another way too:
americans want CHEAP Consumer "satisfaction" goodies, toys, components, in order to surround themselves in their social bubbles with the trappings of modernity and "choice" .
THEY CHOSE CHEAP MONEY living...and DEMANDED cheap prices for "my hard-earned dollar".......
GUESS what was the consequence?
CHINA - which ALWAYS was the world's leading "manufacturer" even as far back as thousands of years ago (such as providing Persia and the Middle east with the first "mass-produced" made to order porceleins, silk, etc..) SIMPLY COMPLIED with the western demands.
- it is like COCAINE from colombia.
the producers can make the plant's chemicals according to "demand" as they say in capitalism.
SINCE the americans and europeans LOVE to "live it up" with chemically altered coca to "enhance" their "life of choice"...
GUESS what happens? THE DRUG TRADE.
SAME as with CHEAP GOODS from china or elsewhere. they are simply fillin in the "order" from WEstern Consumers! and Western consumers in Seattle, to New York, to paris to Munich
are simply GETTING the "extra" that COMES with THEIR own DEMANDS for goods from other developing nations:
the pollution wafting into their own shores!
the SCIENCE is one thing -- and governments , INCLUDING china, and all of asia, ought to do something about it, the RIGHT thing for not just themselves but for the whole planet.
but it is also another thing for ANYONE in the west to DENY the complicity or even PRIME guilt of the western nations in creating a GAME of Global economics that has LED to such a situation for everyone.
many years ag0 -- after many MORE years of being away from my home country , Philippines....I was really SHOCKED - and horrified in a very visceral way -- when the plane was entering the philippines ...and as it went gradually lower to enable one to see the archipelago's beautiful islands and then lower to see the actual landscape -- how Forests , Hills, mountains were DENUDED....completely....
like a desert....
I was crying when I saw that..my beautiful homeland -- with its rich forests - so much of it had begun to be SCALPED literally of greenery...and when I flew south - experiencing below me the common experience of seeing the whole archipelago unfold like a wreath of beautiful jewels on a blue sea...I saw what were once , even just from my childhood , a mere few decades ago, what were once pristine , rich in life beaches and seas - showing Brown and Red and other color EFFLUENCE from FOREIGN owned factories for minerals, wood, and many other things for "export". leaving the country and the populace with little or nothing but the pollution and poverty
as ORDERED by the INternational Monetary Fund, the World Bank and WASHINGTON!
and this i KNOW because a cousin of mine worked for the government in trying to get a better "deal" trying to defend the countries' economy and resources from the demands of the WEST!
much later - i asked questions - and the common response was:
"well - that is because foreign corporations, especially from the USA and Europe demand these things...logging companies must supply them with housing material from our wood which is beautiful and strong...and other regions have to be opened up to create 'economic zones' for companies to do business here..we can do nothing about it...because they have the money and we don't..and for us to earn a few dollars so we can survive...in return we have to give up our resources for almost nothing".
Pollution FROM asia wafting TO the USA?
THAT"s the CHILD of US imperialist , capitalist Corporatism, folks.
" OUR foreign policy has always been geared towards gathering as much of the world's resources unto ourselves at the expense of others........it has nothing to do with freedom or democracy or justice...it is part of our Money and War Racket Capitalist gangsterism...the trouble with US americans is:
when our DOLLAR can't buy more than 6% of its value AT HOME.. WE get uneasy...so we go abroad so it can buy 100% more..and where the DOLLAR goes, our Flag Follows, where the Flag Follows, our Army Goes...
"the True purpose of our Armed Forces is to make the world safe for our BIG BOSS: our Supernationalistic Capitalism and our Cultural and Economic ASSAULT".
General Smedley Butler, US MARINES, 1933.
You got it, teddy. A very wicked Gloom and Doom is here, and has been for a long time, but now the dark clouds are thickening faster and faster. It rips the heart out because it will keep getting worse, and people will go on with business as usual, until one day there may not be anywhere to hide.
In summers when I was growing up we lived on a long stretch of beach in a relatively unpopulated area. The porpoises put on a show everyday. And little golden shells my sister and I called "Mermaids' fingernails" could be gathered by the bucketful and made into bracelets and necklaces.
Going back to visit about fifteen years after I'd grown up and left home, I was surprised at the number of houses that had been built in the area. And then I walked to "My Beach." It was littered with trash--empty pop bottles and crushed beer cans, plastic bags of all kinds that had contained potato chips or Fritos, and all the paper and plastic leavings from "a day at the beach."
The porpoises were gone. And there wasn't even one little golden shell to be found.
I took comfort in the familiar sound of the ocean and the rhythm of the waves, and the still-huge presence of the rocks for about a quarter of a mile along the sand, and especially from the ones in the water we used to dive from or cling too as the tide came in or went out. Likely now, I am the only one alive who still knows the names of all the rocks
That beach was a magic place, a mysterious place, a teaching place, a very personal place for a little girl growing up. It's where I learned to go with the current and also to swim against the current, and not get knocked over when I headed into the high winds coming at me when a storm was coming. Important lessons.
You have so much first-hand, painful knowings, teddy, unlike so many who were born and raised in the U.S. And as I said on another post, I certainly do know now why you had to SHOUT! even though it got you banished for a time. I'm glad you're still SHOUTING with a few words.
Too bad you don't live nearby. We could SHOUT together.
Sheer wickedness out of control. I never used to use that word, but in these last years, it has become totally appropriate.
When does one realize that we have entered an EMERGENCY TIME right where most of us are standing?
peace to you, teddy.
/cm
Hi Cee ...
Despite my often-times "dire" comments and about dire circumstances...believe - deep down, i STILL believe that americans have it in them to somehow find a way to "better" the wrongs done in their name.
call it blind faith in people , or blind faith in americans..but so long as there are souls like yourself and many others...i'm still the optimist.
just look at Haiti:
centuries of destruction by foreign powers, one of the poorest nations on earth through really no fault of their own as a nation if any can be said of any nation, struck by the consequences of poverty and desperation with things such as crime, dictatorships, elites that have no feelings towards their own people, destroyed by an earthquake, after already having to try to recover from those mudslides and hurricanes a few years ago leaving people with nothing but MUD to EAT...and STILL they "rebuild".
americans can do the same -- but towards using the USA' great wealth and power and their relatively much greater prosperity and advancement to ACTUALLY BUILD a nation worthy of its claims of the highest principles and ethics of civilization.
maybe not soon (which is not soon ENOUGH)...but americans are people just like anyone ..and since they ARE - there is the capacity to be what they can and OUGHT to be because of the privilege and the responsibility as a nation that comes with it:
be PROPER models among other models for humanity and civilization...not just a nation sustained more by being grasping, selfish and greedy people...who are mainly only jealous of losing their perceived "exceptionality" as a people.
There are so many wonderful, just plain good, kind, solid people in America, but that's true, I believe, all over the world.
You're right that we've had so much prosperity and power, and still do in some circles, but I'd say that because the vast majority of the Boomer generation and their offspring and now their grandchildren have known little else than the prosperity unleashed after WWII, at which time with the advent of television the boomers were "trained" to be consumers of products, entertainment, exotic vacations, and so forth, and generally they could have what they wanted. They have not known genuine hardship, but have suffered intellectual loss in a culture gone out of control, always presenting new distractions, more stuff, and enticements of all kinds, including drugs.
Education is not at all challenging from the early years through high school because teachers are of the boomer generation too who were brought up not to be critical thinkers and their general knowledge background is usually very limited. Choosing between this outfit or that outfit or this color hair or that color hair, hanging out at the mall is far more popular for generations now than sitting home reading a book on your own. Television has contributed to mind numbing and mind-shaping and value-shaping.
Too many are shallow in their thinking, in their relating to others other than those they know, and they are apathetic and disinterested about what is going on in their country and across the world. But how could they not be. The U.S.A. from Reagan on has had a very different agenda. And those who plan and control that agenda from outside the government and inside the government are all about money, power and control for themselves.
Our younger people are still an untapped resource because they haven't really been challenged to be more than they are now.
My experiences include the final years of The Great Depression, WWII to now and what I understand based on quite a bit of reading and researching is that we are in the process of being gutted out as a nation. I understood this five/six years ago. In order to compete with China, for example, our middle-class has to be reduced to fairly low wage earners. Our manufacturing base is gone. Our U.S. corporations are now multi-national corporations and are not located here anymore for the most part. Jobs and higher positions have been exported. I could go on and on, but it's about Global Monies for the wealthy, and their control of resources wherever those resources happen to be. And you have written about that above.
So among all the problems: threats of global warming, oil that now has to be imported, an economy gone belly-up because of the very unscrupulous dealings of those on Wall Street and in the Federal Reserve consortium of global banks, and our own questionable leaders whose interests are money, global power and control, that leaves the well-being of U.S. citizens not terribly important. That is reflected in the policies of both Bush Administrations especially, Clinton, and this first year with Obama. The policies clearly have more to do with making war and making profits by Wall Streeters and arms and war machine manufacturers.
A lot of people in this country who have never known real hardship are going to find out what they are made of, and that may be the necessary lesson so that they become deeper people, more aware people, and stronger, smarter people in the long run. Likely they will also understand the value of what, for so long, they have taken for granted. Life in the U.S. is changing fast. There still is tremendous apathy and unawareness. I suspect, however, that will change sooner rather than later.
Maybe this is the beginning of a transformation to a concept of all people being valued, a world where there is true cooperation and sharing and compassion and generosity and helping each other and respect and appreciation for our shared humanity. Transformations are never easy, and so I think there will be a lot of pain in the long years before we get there.
I hope we do. It would be such a waste of a beautiful planet with so many wonderful life forms, such a waste of so many wonderful people with all kinds of potential, with all kinds of unique cultural offerings, with many good hearts and many good minds.
We'll find out, won't we?
peace, cm
Cee Miracles - thanks for sharing your stories too...we ALL can learn from each other, most especially about how our similarities are as important as our differences in making us each UNIQUE and equally special ..but that with the differences ought to come tolerance and and even admiration for the differences because those are , at our best as human beings if societies we create would only allow them to flourish, they are each our GIFTS to each other...and with the similarities should NOT come intolerance for the differences ...or unreasonable fear of "the other".
as for many americans seemingly continuing to not think or even act on conditions LIKE they are emergencies where it is their own government or institutions that have become their great enemies rather than foreigners who never had any quarrels with americans UNTIL the USA's own leaderships meddled in foreign affairs -- well....we can see the proof:
people are distracted by "EVENTS" , the "talk of the town", the IMPORT of analysing
the "FIRST PUBLIC STATEMENT BY THE GREATEST GOLFER ON EARTH: TIGER WOODS".....
while by the very act of reading or involving their attention with such matters - americans keep letting their lords and masters PILFER their money straight out of their pockets....
and THEN they wonder why they have to CUT EXPENSES for the week's FOOD for their children......
Sometimes these "Studies" mystify me. This is hardly rocket science. The ability of the jet Stream to carry particulates around the globe has been known for decades if not Centuries.
Krakatoa's explosion saw dust and particulates go around the globe several times over.
I think all these studies do is allow the powers thet be to put off doing anything about it until the studies are complete.
>>In 2003 researchers at Plymouth University in England studied animal intelligence by giving macaque moneys a computer.They reported that the monkeys attacked the machine, threw feces at it, and, contrary to their hopes, failed to produce a single word.
Damn, it is getting harder to "outsource"pollution when it comes back to choke you.Another hidden cost of cheap plastic crap brought to you by Mall Wart.Small world.I am proud to say that I have never been in a Mall Wart store.
One of the reasons US corporations left the US was to get away from pollution laws. We still end up with the pollution. I bet they think we shouldn't suit them.
sheesh - importing pollution - doesn't the USA produce anything anymore?
We are all One—if we only knew it!"
Yes, Jeevee ... but we're not in charge of the evolvement schedule.
peace, cm
You might have known they would blame someone else, but I wonder which is cleaner, the original or the import?
Wouldn't the gases being replaced by pollution have to migrate somewhere else? Since the other is blowing from the west, they say, then the US will be polluting the EU, and possibly Africa, who in turn will be polluting... What goes around comes around.
Well ... wind only blows west here in the northern hemisphere in the Westerlies.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Earth_Global_Circulation.jpg
the funny thing about the article is how it is framed:
of course asia has pollution due to the hastening to industrialize to "catch up" with the west and particularly the USA ....which begs the question BEFORE the question of global pollution "studied" according to these patterns (not questioning the science of course) :
WHICH COUNTRIES and REGIONS STARTED the global pollution using industrialization as the way to control the world's resources?
in over 6 thousand years of civilization -- WHEN did the global pollution levels so threatening TODAY BEGIN?..only in the last 200 hundred years.
WHO STARTED THAT and forced the rest of the world to "compete?"
further - the article contradicts itself:
1) it mentions that
"it appears the pollution does not come from the USA"
and YET
2) needed to mention, though passingly, that "europe" also is detecing such pollution -- FROM the USA.
what goes around. comes around. they say.
but before THAT statement is:
WHICH one BEGAN what "goes around?"
it ISN"T china, nor asia..much OLDER as they are.
it has a NAME - the USA and western Europe themselves.
INCLUDING their colonialist expansions that impoverished other countries and regions that forced THOSE regions to 'catch up'
ACCORDING to the global structure of "civilization" the WEST INVENTED!
so now - "studies" are being made to find "the culprits" -- They're ASIANS -
long after the USA and the Europeans ALREADY polluted NOT ONLY asia but other continents - poisoning their lands with the western corporate effluences and consequent "lifestyles" imposed on countries everywhere in order to enrich the WEST at others' expense
because the USA now can claim "we have high standards of anti-pollution"...
yeah - right!
it is REALLY funny how "studies" from the west (well-intentioned as they presumably are and merely putting out the science, regardless) --
end up "pointing fingers" anyway -- while blithely forgetting the economic-social,historical fact that
WHILE the USA and the WEST were POLLUTING regions all over the place for their own enrichment - NO ONE in the world was SUPPOSED to complain or "point fingers" or if they do serious study on the CONSEQUENCES of WESTERN IMPERIALISM and capitalism , such as in the form of political and social RESISTANCE to western imperialisms by natives elsewhere...
they are "backward"..and they should just "OPEN THE MARKETS"....
well.....the asians HAVE opened up to the west....beyond their open markets for thousands of years with EACH OTHER ....
and LOOK at the consequences!
are the west going to call for "controls" on asian or other regional economies to GET where the WEST's OWN instigations of colonialism , opening up "markets" , eventually arrived at countries PLAYING THE GAME that west imposed, with its concomittant POLLUTIONS?
it's FUNNY how the USA or the west NOW are sooooooooo concerned with POLLUTION "from elsewhere" to mitigate their own PRESENT continuin pollutions which they EXPORT somewhere else (europe does THAT with its garbage to poor countries, INCLUDING SOMALIA! as an example, or any country poor enough to want to accept the CASH! for being a dumping ground, so westerners can pretend to THEMSELVES - their "high standards" of "clean environment" WENT AWAY....through their own GOOD Civilization when all they did is EXPORT it elsewhere)...
it's funny that they are so CONCERNED about pollution in "developing nations" after having DEVELOPED themselves with the GREATEST POLLUTION records on earth - INTENTIONALLY so. !
how FUNNY!
And the WarMonkeys and Pinheads at the Pentagram are seriously entertaining the use of offensive nuclear weapons! (Used as preemptive offense instead of defense.) That chit's going to circle the globe and rain down on everybody just like it did with Chernobyl in 1986.
Boycott plastic!
Boycott everything!
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"The study didn't pinpoint which Asian countries the ozone might be coming from, Jaffe said. Among the possibilities are China, India and Vietnam." I think it is interesting that the Asian countries, speculated to be the source of the pollution, don't include such long industrialized countries as Japan and S. Korea, both of whom are geographically closer to the US than the ones mentioned. The fact that they are also close allies with the USA, I'm sure, has nothing to do with it.