Living in China takes 3.5 years off your life

Living in China takes 3.5 years off your life

BEIJING - China's failure to bring air quality up to global standards is shaving years off the lives of its citizens: 3½ years on average, to be precise.

That is according to a new analysis by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which also finds that in northeastern cities like Harbin, which are located in the country's industrial heartland, that figure is as high as 6.9 years.

Greater levels of particulate-matter pollution have been linked to higher risks of heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. "Particulate matter is the greatest environmental risk to human health around the world, and most of the damages are occurring in China and India," said Michael Greenstone, Energy Policy Institute's director.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared a "war on pollution" in 2014, but smog levels remain far in excess of World Health Organisation standards, as well as China's own. In 2016, among 338 cities surveyed by the country's Environment Ministry, only 84 met national guidelines on air quality.

The institute's analysis found that if China brought its air quality up to domestic standards, it would extend the life expectancy of its residents by more than a year.

Beijing's war on air pollution has been concentrated in the country's smog-plagued north, where air pollution reliably rises sharply in winter when government-provided free heating gets turned on and coal plants are fired up.

A separate study published Monday in the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that as a consequence of such pollution, people living in northern China live 3.1 years less than those in the south when controlling for other factors.

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