pollution

Volunteers cleaned up 45 tons of garbage from Manila Bay beach, restored it to its former glory

Humans have the power to make things right again.

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Cans full of smoggy “Beijing Air” for sale online, come with warning: choking hazard 【Video】

“Recommended for those who want to get sick.”

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Chinese student goes to ridiculous lengths to breathe clean air in dorm full of smokers 【Pics】

When you’re too introverted to ask your roommates to please smoke outside.

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The dirty reason China can’t always tell North Korea what to do

Global consumption of coal has declined significantly over the past year, driven by China, which makes up about half of the world’s demand for coal.

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Slimy green algae is taking over China’s beaches for an alarming reason

Every summer for the past eight years, huge algae blooms have taken over the beaches near Qingdao, a city in the Shandong province of China.

The bright green stuff has blanketed at least 13,500 square miles of ocean this summer, according to the South China Morning Post.

And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. In 2013, the blooms got as big as the state of Connecticut! Check out this year’s algae infestation.

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Young inventor dreams big to cleanup ocean plastic, will launch test in Japan

What did you accomplish by the time you were 20 years old? Did you answer, “inspired an entire world to get behind your idea to clean the ocean”?

A Dutch engineering phenom has done just that with his project The Ocean Cleanup. In 2016, he and his team will launch a pilot program that will eventually lead them to tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that lies between Hawaii and California. However, any idea has to start somewhere, and that somewhere will be Japan.

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Kagoshima’s aquarium exhibit leaves visitors with a chilling message

Kagoshima Prefecture is located at the southernmost tip of the island of Kyushu, Japan. Among other things, it is famous for its sweet potatoes, Shirokuma shaved-ice dessert, and Sakurajima, one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

Another popular attraction is the Kagoshima aquarium Io World. The aquarium features much of the prefecture’s own marine life, and even has a giant tank which holds a giant whale shark.

One tank in particular, however, is leaving some visitors with an eerie, chilling feeling. As one Japanese Twitter user recalls of the exhibit pictured above, seeing it as a child left her with goosebumps and still haunts her to this day.

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There’s something fishy about that catch! People in Chinese city urged not to eat floating carp

In a city in China’s southwestern Shichuan Province during the early hours of April 2, a man walking alongside the river suddenly noticed what appeared to be huge quantities of pale fish floating in the water.

He quickly rushed home and returned with fishing equipment, and was soon joined by crowds of amateur fishers – and local officials, who subsequently hauled 300 kilograms of fish from the river to be destroyed.

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Oysters’ amazing cleaning skills shock Japanese netizens who question their shellfish habit

You may be familiar with oysters as the delicious seafood best eaten raw (or as ice cream) and served in months ending in “r,” but did you also know the little guys have impressive filtering skills that can clean even the dirtiest water?

Eating its fill of plankton and other particles floating around, a fully grown oyster can filter more than 50 gallons (189 liters) of seawater in one day. After seeing a few videos demonstrating this cleaning ability, some Japanese netizens started to question just how appetizing this made the once delicious-looking oyster.

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China to remove six million cars from its roads in an effort to make city air breathable again

Chinese cities have featured a lot in the news over the past few years. With the country experiencing rapid economic growth and its industries going into overdrive – though often with scant regard for the environment – the air quality in some cities has deteriorated to the point that health organisations have warned against spending too much time outdoors. The country’s rivers, too, bear the scars of progress as factories pump tons of waste into them, in some cases turning the water dark red.

Thankfully, though, the Chinese government has pledged to address the situation, and has this week announced plans to remove as many as six million vehicles from its roads in an effort to detoxify city air.

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China’s polluted rivers can be surprisingly pretty, but might turn you into a mutant

It’s well-known that China’s struggling with some serious air pollution, but perhaps less talked about is the toll being taken on their rivers. According to a recent survey conducted by Chinese media, 96% of respondents felt that not a single river around them was clean enough to swim in. And judging from these photos, anyone who did decide to risk a dive would probably come out looking worse than the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

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Think Beijing’s famous smog Is bad? Delhi’s is worse 【Photos】

China’s smog — which routinely engulfs major cities like Beijing and Shanghai — is notorious, and it’s recently reached “danger levels.” But the the smog in New Delhi, The New York Times reports, is actually worse.

The air in New Delhi “is more laden with dangerous small particles of pollution, more often, than Beijing’s,” Gardiner Harris writes, and “a very bad air day in Beijing is about an average one in New Delhi.”

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Air quality in Beijing now so poor that sunrises are being broadcast on giant TV screens [UPDATED]

As if today being a Monday wasn’t depressing enough, media outlets are reporting that the air quality and visibility in China’s capital city has become so bad that the state has begun televising live footage of sunrises on enormous screens ordinarily used for advertising. That’s right: with the real thing now almost completely hidden behind a thick layer of smog, people are actually watching nature on TV.

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Hong Kong Tourism Board resorts to some unusual tactics to get around China’s smog problem

As many of you may be aware, China has had some serious pollution problems in recent years with contamination spreading far and wide, affecting people’s health and everyday lifestyles. With all this negative publicity, it is of no surprise that China’s tourism industry has seen a decline in visitors to the country.

However, the Hong Kong Tourism Board has come up with a rather clever and, shall we say, peculiar scheme that guarantees to get rid of the smog, at least for all the tourists who want to capture a special photo for the occasion. It comes in the form of a picturesque banner of the Hong Kong landscape that is substituted for the real, polluted background. It’s just a case of standing in front of it, saying cheese and you’re done. Granted the picture may look good but it still doesn’t solve the actual problem of pollution.
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Japanese website lists cases of food-related scandals in China

With the country growing at an unprecedented rate and many still living below the poverty line, it is inevitable that China should struggle to control the quality of the foodstuffs it manufactures. With a reputation for being cheap and of inferior quality, Chinese exports are often unfairly labelled as potentially harmful or unappetising, and many in neighboring countries will snub Chinese-produced consumables found on supermarket shelves purely because of where they come from. But when developed countries rely so much on cheap Chinese labor and exports, one sometimes has to wonder whether this is partly a problem of our own making.

Of course, Japan rarely sees eye-to-eye with China, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it should focus on the negative when it comes to news of this kind. This week in fact, website Madame Riri published an article outlining 10 cases of food products from China that have caused scandal in recent years. After reading their list, though, even we can’t help but feel a little concerned for the wellbeing of the world’s next superpower.

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Air Pollution Accounting for 15 Percent of Deaths in China


According to the April 2 edition of Chinese daily newspaper the 21st Century Business Herald, in the year 2010 an incredible 1.23 million people lost their lives across China due to air pollution-related illnesses. The number accounts for 15 percent of total deaths recorded in the country for 2010. The information was revealed by a study group at Tsinghua University on March 31.
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Are Rotting Pig Corpses to Blame for China’s Electric Pink Drinking Water?

A little while back, we reported on the air pollution problem over in China. This week, however, a different form of pollution has come to light. On first sight, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a prop from a mutant zombie movie. However what can be seen in the picture above is in fact the tap water of a residential area in Jinan, China. In total, over 500 inhabitants of the area have fallen victim to this most recent ‘pink water’ phenomenon.

Obviously drinking the stuff is out of the question and many residents have been forced, as a temporary measure, to secure rations of bottled water. Just how contaminated this water is remains unclear, but even more intriguing is what caused the phenomenon in the first place. And how harmful could it actually be? Could simply giving the stuff a good, long sniff be hazardous to people’s health?

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Could Serious Smog Problems See China Moving Its Capital Away from Beijing?

Recent reports from Radio France Internationale (RFI)’s Chinese site suggest that China’s pollution problem is raising serious concerns within the country itself. In the push for economic growth, the China is also becoming increasingly aware of what could potentially develop into a serious problem if steps are not taken soon. In this connection, there has been heated debate on the Internet suggesting that Chinese authorities are proposing moving the capital away from Beijing.

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Measure Asia’s Air Pollution with a Map Based on the Length of Your Nasal Hair!

In recent years along with many other developing Asian nations, China has been increasing its level of industrial manufacturing as it readies itself for remarkable industrial growth. However, neglecting its environment for the sake of industry has brought with it the problem of dense smog pollution, with microscopic smog particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less having been detected in overwhelming large amounts in China’s air in recent days.

The smog is the same as that found in factory exhausts, car fumes and the like. Measured per cubic meter, at one instance the observed value of pollution in Beijing reached levels 10 times the Chinese government’s recommended safety level. If one were to go by the Wealth Health Organization (WHO)’s recommended value, the figure rises to 40 times greater than normal. When it comes to pollution, it is thought that of the asian nations undergoing remarkable growth, 70% of nations are reaching a critical level. The toxic substances that seep out into the environment cause asthma, pneumonia and even in some cases death.

Of course, those living in highly polluted areas will surely want to know how their air compares, but measuring the levels each time can prove tiresome and expensive. With this in mind, one innovative company called Clean Air Asia has stumbled upon a way determine just how polluted your air is, and has designed an interactive map based on – wait for it – nostil hair.

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Chinese Air Pollution Expected to Cross Over to Western Japan

For days now Beijing has been suffering from a prolonged spell of the worst air pollution in the city’s history, a crisis so bad that it has been dubbed the “airpocalypse”.

The air has been classified as hazardous to human health and has already sent countless people to the hospital for respiratory ailments. The city is blanketed in a thick grey fog that is said to smell of coal and sting the eyes, leading officials to close highways, force the cancellation of flights and outdoor activities, and warn people in affected areas to remain indoors.

According to a researcher at Kyushu University, China’s giant toxic cloud of pollution is now expected to cross over to western Japan sometime later today.

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