China is losing a life-or-death battle to bring toxic smog under control and the government may have drastically underestimated the magnitude of the coming health crisis, new research suggests.
The latest alarm, which was sounded as the skies turned brown and the unofficial air quality index in Beijing yesterday hit “very unhealthy” levels, arose from a study showing that outdoor air pollution led to 1.2 million premature deaths throughout China in 2010.
The numbers were distilled from of a study published in The Lancet two years ago by the US-based and partly government-financed Health Effects Institute (HEI).
(Source:The Times,http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article3729341.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_04_02)
