Truly scary stuff, and perhaps it is time to be a bit more aware of the things developing around us beyond our control, sight, or reason to fathom. Nanoparticles! Science fiction not too long ago, then high technology, now pervasive everywhere.
---
Deaths, lung damage linked to nanoparticles in China
By Tan Ee Lyn
Source - Reuters 17 August 2009
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Seven young Chinese women suffered permanent lung damage and two of them died after working for months without proper protection in a paint factory using nanoparticles, Chinese researchers reported on Wednesday.
They said the study is the first to document health effects of nanotechnology in humans, although animal studies in the past have shown nanoparticles could damage the lungs of rats.
"These cases arouse concern that long term exposure to nanoparticles without protective measures may be related to serious damage to human lungs," Yuguo Song from the occupational disease and clinical toxicology department at Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing wrote in the European Respiratory Journal.
But a U.S. government expert said the study was more a demonstration of industrial hazards than any evidence that nanoparticles pose more of a risk than other chemicals.
Nanotechnology is an important industry. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter (yard) and nanoparticles measure between 1 to 100 nanometers.
It is used in products like sporting goods, tires, electronics, cosmetics and surface coatings and has a projected annual market of around $1 trillion by 2015.
"Their tiny diameter means that they can penetrate the body's natural barriers, particularly through contact with damaged skin or by inhalation or ingestion," Song and colleagues wrote.
They said the seven women had worked for between five to 13 months in a factory spraying paint on polystyrene boards before they developed breathing difficulties and rashes on their faces and arms.
The women breathed in fumes and smoke that contained nanoparticles while working in the factory, Song said.
PARTICLES AND FLUID
According to the paper, doctors found the women had excess fluids in the cavities surrounding their lungs and hearts, conditions that impair breathing and heart function.
Their lung tissues and fluids contained nanoparticles about 30 nanometers in diameter -- matching particles that health protection officials later found in materials used in the factory where the women worked.
Two of the women died within two years of working in the factory. The condition of the other five women has not improved even though they are no longer handling such materials.
It is impossible to remove nanoparticles once they penetrate lung cells, wrote Song.
Allen Chan, a chemical pathologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong not connected to the study, said the findings were significant.
"These findings are important because they provide concrete evidence that these materials are harmful and protection must be given to workers," he said.
But Clayton Teague, who heads the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that the women who were sickened on the job were spraying a paste containing nanoparticles in a very small, unventilated room, and wore gauze masks only occasionally.
He said in the United States the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has developed extensive safety training for nanotechnology workers and a proactive risk management system to help companies maximize worker safety.
"From what we know, this tragedy could have been avoided by proper industrial hygiene techniques," Teague said.
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
'Civilised city' campaign
Things are getting better all the time. Reminiscent of the great Beijing Olympics cleanup in 2008, cities in China are competing to get civilised. Although in this case, it seems really cosmetic.
But... "Women wearing red armbands patrol the streets and pick up cigarette butts. Volunteer crossing guards with yellow flags and whistles make sure people wait for green lights. Beggars, even those with legs withered by polio, are banished from their usual haunts on pedestrian bridges."
Too much? Going too far?
---
'Civilised city' campaign
AP
Source - Straits Times 25 August 2009
Each year, the central government awards the prized designation to one or more cities, and it is a big deal for Guangzhou (left), once known as Canton, as it tries to shed a reputation for being dirty and crime-ridden. -- PHOTO: AP
GUANGZHOU - GOVERNMENT-BACKED neighbourhood groups are going door-to-door in south China's gritty business capital with a set of simple requests: Please stop spitting in public, cutting in bus lines and talking loudly in the streets.
It's all part of a campaign in Guangzhou, China's third-wealthiest metropolis, to win the coveted 'Civilised City' award - an annual ritual that sparks months of frantic scrubbing and buffing in cities across China.
Women wearing red armbands patrol the streets and pick up cigarette butts. Volunteer crossing guards with yellow flags and whistles make sure people wait for green lights. Beggars, even those with legs withered by polio, are banished from their usual haunts on pedestrian bridges.
While some citizens remain skeptical of the cleanup drive, it jibes with Chinese leaders' goal of shifting away from the blind pursuit of blistering economic growth at any cost. They want to focus more on creating a spiffier, healthier, more cultured and harmonious society.
Each year, the central government awards the prized designation to one or more cities, and it is a big deal for Guangzhou, once known as Canton, as it tries to shed a reputation for being dirty and crime-ridden. Next year, this historic port city of 10 million people hosts the Asian Games - the region's equivalent of the Olympics - that will draw 25,000 athletes, coaches and journalists from 45 countries.
The civility campaign also highlights how the Communist Party still likes to indulge in often heavy-handed Big Brother social engineering, reaching deep into people's lives - or at least their living rooms - to try to mould the masses.
Beijing launched a similar campaign before the 2008 Olympics, trying to curb spitting, jumping ahead in line, littering and reckless driving.
In Guangzhou, members of neighbourhood committees, government-backed councils that monitor households, are knocking on doors in the evening and handing out a survey and brochures about improving civil behaviour. -- AP
But... "Women wearing red armbands patrol the streets and pick up cigarette butts. Volunteer crossing guards with yellow flags and whistles make sure people wait for green lights. Beggars, even those with legs withered by polio, are banished from their usual haunts on pedestrian bridges."
Too much? Going too far?
---
'Civilised city' campaign
AP
Source - Straits Times 25 August 2009
GUANGZHOU - GOVERNMENT-BACKED neighbourhood groups are going door-to-door in south China's gritty business capital with a set of simple requests: Please stop spitting in public, cutting in bus lines and talking loudly in the streets.
It's all part of a campaign in Guangzhou, China's third-wealthiest metropolis, to win the coveted 'Civilised City' award - an annual ritual that sparks months of frantic scrubbing and buffing in cities across China.
Women wearing red armbands patrol the streets and pick up cigarette butts. Volunteer crossing guards with yellow flags and whistles make sure people wait for green lights. Beggars, even those with legs withered by polio, are banished from their usual haunts on pedestrian bridges.
While some citizens remain skeptical of the cleanup drive, it jibes with Chinese leaders' goal of shifting away from the blind pursuit of blistering economic growth at any cost. They want to focus more on creating a spiffier, healthier, more cultured and harmonious society.
Each year, the central government awards the prized designation to one or more cities, and it is a big deal for Guangzhou, once known as Canton, as it tries to shed a reputation for being dirty and crime-ridden. Next year, this historic port city of 10 million people hosts the Asian Games - the region's equivalent of the Olympics - that will draw 25,000 athletes, coaches and journalists from 45 countries.
The civility campaign also highlights how the Communist Party still likes to indulge in often heavy-handed Big Brother social engineering, reaching deep into people's lives - or at least their living rooms - to try to mould the masses.
Beijing launched a similar campaign before the 2008 Olympics, trying to curb spitting, jumping ahead in line, littering and reckless driving.
In Guangzhou, members of neighbourhood committees, government-backed councils that monitor households, are knocking on doors in the evening and handing out a survey and brochures about improving civil behaviour. -- AP
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Hazy future for pollution tax
Being the world's factory also means being a major major source of pollution. This I have been worried about since my trip to Shenzhen in 2002 where skyscrapers were being built to fill the entire horizon. If China were to poise itself to be a world leader, I reckon truly leading the way by keeping our skies clean and blue would win her more genuine supporters (albeit green ones, I'm sure that wouldn't hurt) - also see earlier post on how Beijing dealt with polluting cars, by scrapping about 350,000 of them in Beijing alone. Maybe it was just for the Olympics. Hmm.
No need for further public diplomacy or any charm offensive needed. Just show and pave the way for true nobility as of the great Chinese thinkers of old. The advantage China has is the ability to introduce sweeping reforms with little in the way, let's hope money-making doesn't cloud that ideal, as it already has in so many aspects.
Also, do note the last paragraph. the source asserts China's hit a low of 6.1% growth in the first quarter of 2009. Looks like the Chinese machine is still churning out the goods whilst the rest of the world backslides. The phoenix has indeed re-risen. Let's hope it learns to set a good example, a la Confucius!
---
Cyclists passed through thick pollution from a factory in Yutian, 100 kilometers east of Beijing in North China’s Hebei Province. Photo: ImagineChina
Hazy future for pollution tax
By Sun Zhe
Source - the Global Times June 18 2009
A man was caught spitting on the sidewalk and fined 50 yuan ($14.64). The guy took a 100-yuan note out of his pocket, handed it to the cop and said, “Keep the change. I want to do it again.”
The joke mirrors the doubt that the environment taxation issue has triggered. Would it really ease pollution, or it is just a government money maker?
A two-year history
Vice Finance Minister Wang Jun said on June 11 that the Ministry of Finance was considering the environmental taxation issue.
In saying that Wang was echoing his counterpart in the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Zhang Lijun, who said on June 5 that eco-taxation has been put on the schedule of “significant issues,” and was being pondered by Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) and the MEP.
It’s not the first time that heads of the state environment bureau has brought up the issue.
It was noted in an emissions reduction schedule released as early as June 2007, when the National Development and Reform Commission stated that China was going to tax polluters. The MEP – then the State Environmental Protection Administration, which was upgraded to ministry level in March 2008 to highlight the government’s eco-consciousness – had declared at the time that an environment tax was being discussed.
However, in June Zhang and Wang, like their predecessors, did not give a timetable for any eco-tax.
Environment destruction has accompanied China’s GDP rush for years. Heavy air pollution chokes in one third of the country’s cities, more than one fourth of its rivers and lakes are contaminated by industrial waste, and 90 percent of its rivers crossing urban areas are heavily polluted, according to a February working session of the MEP in Shanghai.
“The government would always weigh whether the employment and the GDP that one industry created was really worth the harm, or pollution, it causes,” said Fan Yong, dean of the taxation department with the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, “That is one reason pollution tax is being brought forward now.”
But pollution has not been “free” for years since China adopted the pay-as-you-pollute policy in 1982 when the State Council approved the emission fee proposal.
“It is typical in China that before the government launches a new tax, it first makes it a fee,” Wang Surong, a taxation expert with Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times.
“It’s like a test run,” said Wang, “just to get people warmed up for the payment.”
It’s customary within China’s taxation system to transform fees into taxes, according to Fan.
“A tax is more transparent and compulsory than a fee,” said Fan, “because it has the taxation law to back it up.”
The government has adopted tax policies, such as subsidies or kickbacks on value-added taxes and income taxes, to award environmentally friendly manufacturers, said Fan.
Actually there is already an environment-related tax in China, only it’s called the natural resource tax, launched in 1993. According to the latest figure released by the SAT, the natural resource tax amounted to only 0.5 percent of the country’s annual taxation revenue of 4944.93 billion yuan ($723 billion), while the GDP of 2007 was 24952.99 billion yuan ($3,652 billion).
In 2006 and 2005, the natural resource tax revenue was respectively 0.45 percent and 0.55 percent of the country’s total annual tax revenue.
“It’s not likely that the new tax would be called an ‘environment tax,’” Fan said, “But more likely an emission tax. It’s a transformation of the emission fees (or pollution fees). It applies to solid, liquid and gas wastes like the emission fee does.”
And emissions are likely to be taxed according to their elements, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide, as is done in western European countries.
A higher production cost would be added to the product price and the consumers would pay for price hike, according to Wang.
The new tax would not be a silver bullet to slay pollution because those who can’t afford increased costs will likely turn to cheaper, higher polluting alternatives, while the affluent buyers probably won’t care too much about the price.
“It’s like when the golf tax came into effect,” said Wang, “Nobody chose to hang up their clubs, because golfers are rich enough not to worry too much about the price.”
However, Fan said that if consumers abandoned one product because of a costly pollution tax, it would spur the manufacturer to develop a cheaper, environmentally friendly substitute.
Difficulties ahead
Sun Gang, a researcher with the Research Institute for Fiscal Science under Ministry of Finance, told the Shanghai Securities Daily in January 2008 that departmental conflicts would make it difficult to apply the tax.
“It will involve cooperation between the taxation department and the environmental department of the government,” said Sun. “The interest of different departments would make the issue complicated.”
The environmental bureau has always collected the emission fees, and the same bureau would be responsible for compiling standards and measures for any emission tax, said Sun.
Other difficulties lie in the distribution of the tax revenue, said Fan.
“For example, when a factory pollutes a river running through several cities,” said Fan, “the city where the factory is would pocket the tax, but the other cities also suffer from the pollution, so there should be a way to distribute the tax income to all of them.”
The emission should be taxed according to the production output of the manufacturers’, as it is too hard to measure the emission amount through the outlet, which have made emission fee collection hard, suggested Wang.
Now not the time
The timing of the tax also remains a significant question. But all agree that rolling it out during the current financial crisis wouldn’t be wise.
“It would be good to launch the tax when the global financial downturn is over,” said Wang. “When the economy starts to recover, the consumers would not be as sensitive to price hikes as they would be now.”
China’s record-low quarterly growth of 6.1 percent during the first quarter of 2009 also made the birth of pollution tax extremely unlikely, because worry over any new tax could undermine the country’s stimulus recovery schedule.
No need for further public diplomacy or any charm offensive needed. Just show and pave the way for true nobility as of the great Chinese thinkers of old. The advantage China has is the ability to introduce sweeping reforms with little in the way, let's hope money-making doesn't cloud that ideal, as it already has in so many aspects.
Also, do note the last paragraph. the source asserts China's hit a low of 6.1% growth in the first quarter of 2009. Looks like the Chinese machine is still churning out the goods whilst the rest of the world backslides. The phoenix has indeed re-risen. Let's hope it learns to set a good example, a la Confucius!
---
Cyclists passed through thick pollution from a factory in Yutian, 100 kilometers east of Beijing in North China’s Hebei Province. Photo: ImagineChina
Hazy future for pollution tax
By Sun Zhe
Source - the Global Times June 18 2009
A man was caught spitting on the sidewalk and fined 50 yuan ($14.64). The guy took a 100-yuan note out of his pocket, handed it to the cop and said, “Keep the change. I want to do it again.”
The joke mirrors the doubt that the environment taxation issue has triggered. Would it really ease pollution, or it is just a government money maker?
A two-year history
Vice Finance Minister Wang Jun said on June 11 that the Ministry of Finance was considering the environmental taxation issue.
In saying that Wang was echoing his counterpart in the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Zhang Lijun, who said on June 5 that eco-taxation has been put on the schedule of “significant issues,” and was being pondered by Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) and the MEP.
It’s not the first time that heads of the state environment bureau has brought up the issue.
It was noted in an emissions reduction schedule released as early as June 2007, when the National Development and Reform Commission stated that China was going to tax polluters. The MEP – then the State Environmental Protection Administration, which was upgraded to ministry level in March 2008 to highlight the government’s eco-consciousness – had declared at the time that an environment tax was being discussed.
However, in June Zhang and Wang, like their predecessors, did not give a timetable for any eco-tax.
Environment destruction has accompanied China’s GDP rush for years. Heavy air pollution chokes in one third of the country’s cities, more than one fourth of its rivers and lakes are contaminated by industrial waste, and 90 percent of its rivers crossing urban areas are heavily polluted, according to a February working session of the MEP in Shanghai.
“The government would always weigh whether the employment and the GDP that one industry created was really worth the harm, or pollution, it causes,” said Fan Yong, dean of the taxation department with the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, “That is one reason pollution tax is being brought forward now.”
But pollution has not been “free” for years since China adopted the pay-as-you-pollute policy in 1982 when the State Council approved the emission fee proposal.
“It is typical in China that before the government launches a new tax, it first makes it a fee,” Wang Surong, a taxation expert with Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times.
“It’s like a test run,” said Wang, “just to get people warmed up for the payment.”
It’s customary within China’s taxation system to transform fees into taxes, according to Fan.
“A tax is more transparent and compulsory than a fee,” said Fan, “because it has the taxation law to back it up.”
The government has adopted tax policies, such as subsidies or kickbacks on value-added taxes and income taxes, to award environmentally friendly manufacturers, said Fan.
Actually there is already an environment-related tax in China, only it’s called the natural resource tax, launched in 1993. According to the latest figure released by the SAT, the natural resource tax amounted to only 0.5 percent of the country’s annual taxation revenue of 4944.93 billion yuan ($723 billion), while the GDP of 2007 was 24952.99 billion yuan ($3,652 billion).
In 2006 and 2005, the natural resource tax revenue was respectively 0.45 percent and 0.55 percent of the country’s total annual tax revenue.
“It’s not likely that the new tax would be called an ‘environment tax,’” Fan said, “But more likely an emission tax. It’s a transformation of the emission fees (or pollution fees). It applies to solid, liquid and gas wastes like the emission fee does.”
And emissions are likely to be taxed according to their elements, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide, as is done in western European countries.
A higher production cost would be added to the product price and the consumers would pay for price hike, according to Wang.
The new tax would not be a silver bullet to slay pollution because those who can’t afford increased costs will likely turn to cheaper, higher polluting alternatives, while the affluent buyers probably won’t care too much about the price.
“It’s like when the golf tax came into effect,” said Wang, “Nobody chose to hang up their clubs, because golfers are rich enough not to worry too much about the price.”
However, Fan said that if consumers abandoned one product because of a costly pollution tax, it would spur the manufacturer to develop a cheaper, environmentally friendly substitute.
Difficulties ahead
Sun Gang, a researcher with the Research Institute for Fiscal Science under Ministry of Finance, told the Shanghai Securities Daily in January 2008 that departmental conflicts would make it difficult to apply the tax.
“It will involve cooperation between the taxation department and the environmental department of the government,” said Sun. “The interest of different departments would make the issue complicated.”
The environmental bureau has always collected the emission fees, and the same bureau would be responsible for compiling standards and measures for any emission tax, said Sun.
Other difficulties lie in the distribution of the tax revenue, said Fan.
“For example, when a factory pollutes a river running through several cities,” said Fan, “the city where the factory is would pocket the tax, but the other cities also suffer from the pollution, so there should be a way to distribute the tax income to all of them.”
The emission should be taxed according to the production output of the manufacturers’, as it is too hard to measure the emission amount through the outlet, which have made emission fee collection hard, suggested Wang.
Now not the time
The timing of the tax also remains a significant question. But all agree that rolling it out during the current financial crisis wouldn’t be wise.
“It would be good to launch the tax when the global financial downturn is over,” said Wang. “When the economy starts to recover, the consumers would not be as sensitive to price hikes as they would be now.”
China’s record-low quarterly growth of 6.1 percent during the first quarter of 2009 also made the birth of pollution tax extremely unlikely, because worry over any new tax could undermine the country’s stimulus recovery schedule.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Reluctant earthquake star takes centre stage
Reluctant earthquake star takes centre stage - looks like the Chinese propaganda machine has some kinks it needs to work on.
Source - The Age 120509
---
Source - The Age
THIS is Xiao Yawen on the plane to Beijing, where she is to star tonight on China Central Television's extravaganza to mark the anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.
A year ago Xiao was photographed in the arms of a particularly handsome soldier, Sheng Yufeng, on the morning after the quake that destroyed her home in the mountains above Beichuan town.
The legend is that Mr Sheng reunited Xiao with her mother after they had lost each other in the exodus of earthquake refugees.
Reports said he carried the girl through Beichuan for an hour because the girl's grandmother was exhausted after holding her all night.
Xiao remained happily oblivious to the fuss she was causing in the media until a journalist from the Western China Metropolis Daily finally tracked her down last month.
Last Wednesday, CCTV flew her to Beijing and The Age happened to be seated next to her on the plane. Xiao, as feisty as she is cute, was not at all happy about having to sit for two hours on a plane in sweaty Qiang minority costume to perform for the cameras.
"It's a hassle," Xiao's mother, Yang Shengchun, said. "I refused to go many times, but they kept on asking."
Ms Yang said her daughter had no special story, nor did the soldier with the nicest smile. "We weren't injured," she said. "On May 13 soldiers were taking the healthy survivors through old Beichuan town. One of the soldiers picked her up — the photograph looked like a rescue, but it wasn't — I don't really have much to thank them for."
The People's Liberation Army has a history of legendary soldiers who fought floods, plugged oil wells with their own bodies and performed other selfless acts to protect the nation and capture the hearts of the masses. Typically these heroes, like Lei Feng in the 1960s, were created by the Communist Party's Propaganda Department.
Sheng Yufeng is different to his soldier-hero predecessors because his popularity among users of the internet appears to be genuine and spontaneous.
Nevertheless, the party and PLA propaganda machines have been working overtime in the year since the earthquake to ensure the masses know to whom they should be thankful.
On the ground in Beichuan the reality was not so glorious. Soldiers were conspicuously absent from rescue work in the early days that mattered.
On Saturday, The Age quoted a soldier who said he left a trapped survivor for dead and said his orders did not permit him to rescue her. She was subsequently rescued by local volunteers and firefighters.
That story was censored yesterday in China and The Age's computers in Beijing repeatedly crashed when trying to open it.
Beichuan town remains unoccupied, a graveyard town. Ms Yang and Xiao have been relocated to Anxian town just outside the mountains.
Source - The Age 120509
---
Source - The Age
THIS is Xiao Yawen on the plane to Beijing, where she is to star tonight on China Central Television's extravaganza to mark the anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.
A year ago Xiao was photographed in the arms of a particularly handsome soldier, Sheng Yufeng, on the morning after the quake that destroyed her home in the mountains above Beichuan town.
The legend is that Mr Sheng reunited Xiao with her mother after they had lost each other in the exodus of earthquake refugees.
Reports said he carried the girl through Beichuan for an hour because the girl's grandmother was exhausted after holding her all night.
Xiao remained happily oblivious to the fuss she was causing in the media until a journalist from the Western China Metropolis Daily finally tracked her down last month.
Last Wednesday, CCTV flew her to Beijing and The Age happened to be seated next to her on the plane. Xiao, as feisty as she is cute, was not at all happy about having to sit for two hours on a plane in sweaty Qiang minority costume to perform for the cameras.
"It's a hassle," Xiao's mother, Yang Shengchun, said. "I refused to go many times, but they kept on asking."
Ms Yang said her daughter had no special story, nor did the soldier with the nicest smile. "We weren't injured," she said. "On May 13 soldiers were taking the healthy survivors through old Beichuan town. One of the soldiers picked her up — the photograph looked like a rescue, but it wasn't — I don't really have much to thank them for."
The People's Liberation Army has a history of legendary soldiers who fought floods, plugged oil wells with their own bodies and performed other selfless acts to protect the nation and capture the hearts of the masses. Typically these heroes, like Lei Feng in the 1960s, were created by the Communist Party's Propaganda Department.
Sheng Yufeng is different to his soldier-hero predecessors because his popularity among users of the internet appears to be genuine and spontaneous.
Nevertheless, the party and PLA propaganda machines have been working overtime in the year since the earthquake to ensure the masses know to whom they should be thankful.
On the ground in Beichuan the reality was not so glorious. Soldiers were conspicuously absent from rescue work in the early days that mattered.
On Saturday, The Age quoted a soldier who said he left a trapped survivor for dead and said his orders did not permit him to rescue her. She was subsequently rescued by local volunteers and firefighters.
That story was censored yesterday in China and The Age's computers in Beijing repeatedly crashed when trying to open it.
Beichuan town remains unoccupied, a graveyard town. Ms Yang and Xiao have been relocated to Anxian town just outside the mountains.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Did Humans cause the Sichuan Earthquake?
This might be slightly speculative, but here's an article from Science and Society that ponders if last year's earthquake in Sichuan was triggered by human causes. Have we become so powerful, moving mountains and seas. Some serious food for thought.
Here's a blurp.
---
Earthquakes, whether you're a believer or an actuary, are "acts of God." We humans do not have the power to predict, stop, or cause them. Or so we think. We all jumped a bit at a headline in The Telegraph of London: "Chinese earthquake may have been man-made, say scientists."
"An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre," says Malcolm Moore's article from Shanghai.
"The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.
"Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.
"Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was 'very likely' that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster."
---
So. the question is - "Huh???"
Click here for the full article.
Here's a blurp.
---
Earthquakes, whether you're a believer or an actuary, are "acts of God." We humans do not have the power to predict, stop, or cause them. Or so we think. We all jumped a bit at a headline in The Telegraph of London: "Chinese earthquake may have been man-made, say scientists."
"An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre," says Malcolm Moore's article from Shanghai.
"The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.
"Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.
"Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was 'very likely' that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster."
---
So. the question is - "Huh???"
Click here for the full article.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Beijing's New Year resolution - scrap polluting cars
Beijing's New Year resolution scrap polluting cars
Source - Asia1
Friday, 2 Jan 2009.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing, beset by choking traffic and heavy air pollution, will take more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles off inner city streets from Thursday, local media reported.
China's capital has banned cars from the roads on one out of five weekdays based on the number of licence plates as part of a six-month trial in the wake of broader restrictions during the Olympic Games in August that cleared skies and eased congestion.
Drivers of high-emissions vehicles, known as "yellow-label" cars, would be fined 100 yuan ($21) if found to be driving within the city's Fifth Ring Road, a highway on Beijing's outskirts, after a three-month grace period, the Beijing News said.
The measure stands to take about 10 percent of the city's cars off the road. Beijing currently has about 3.5 million registered cars.
The government had also drafted a compensation scheme that will give drivers up to 25,000 yuan ($3,600) if they proactively give up their cars during 2009, the paper said.
The city would also provide preferential loans to shipping and transport companies to upgrade their vehicle fleets to meet low-emission standards, the paper said, citing the city's traffic bureau.
Beijing authorities have credited cleaner skies above the capital in recent months in part due to the traffic restrictions, as well as decreased emissions from shuttered factories in the city's outskirts.
Car ownership along with rising incomes has skyrocketed in Chinese cities in recent years, posing head-aches for town planners already struggling to build roads and public transport to meet burgeoning urban populations
Source - Asia1
Friday, 2 Jan 2009.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing, beset by choking traffic and heavy air pollution, will take more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles off inner city streets from Thursday, local media reported.
China's capital has banned cars from the roads on one out of five weekdays based on the number of licence plates as part of a six-month trial in the wake of broader restrictions during the Olympic Games in August that cleared skies and eased congestion.
Drivers of high-emissions vehicles, known as "yellow-label" cars, would be fined 100 yuan ($21) if found to be driving within the city's Fifth Ring Road, a highway on Beijing's outskirts, after a three-month grace period, the Beijing News said.
The measure stands to take about 10 percent of the city's cars off the road. Beijing currently has about 3.5 million registered cars.
The government had also drafted a compensation scheme that will give drivers up to 25,000 yuan ($3,600) if they proactively give up their cars during 2009, the paper said.
The city would also provide preferential loans to shipping and transport companies to upgrade their vehicle fleets to meet low-emission standards, the paper said, citing the city's traffic bureau.
Beijing authorities have credited cleaner skies above the capital in recent months in part due to the traffic restrictions, as well as decreased emissions from shuttered factories in the city's outskirts.
Car ownership along with rising incomes has skyrocketed in Chinese cities in recent years, posing head-aches for town planners already struggling to build roads and public transport to meet burgeoning urban populations
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