Smog Strategy Jul11

Smog Strategy

The issue of air pollution in China has been worsening in recent years, with the country forced to issue a red alert warning in January 2017 regarding toxic smog. A wide array of illnesses has been associated with air pollution, including dementia, Alzheimer’s and death. Studies reveal that by 2050, around 6.6 million people will die each year due to this problem. Thus, the development of air purifying technologies has become a critical need. The country has taken various measures to address the problem—only last year, China shut down 40 percent of its factories that failed to meet emissions standards, and announced the intention to ban non-electric cars. A year prior, in October 2016, Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde installed a 23-foot (seven meters) high tower in a creative park in Beijing that took in polluted air and released it without the dust particles. The installation produces about 282.5 cubic feet (eight cubic meters) per second and was entirely powered by electricity generated by coal-power plants in China. Still, the amount of power needed to run was very little. This particular project inspired the Chinese officials to look further into the tower solution. A year after Roosegaarde’s tower worked its magic in Beijing, a larger one was erected in the Shaanxi province in central China. South China Morning Post reports that the tower is 328 feet (100 meters) tall, and reports show it has a positive impact on the air quality in surrounding areas. However, researchers at the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese continue testing the tower’s efficacy—it appears that the tower improved air quality over an area of 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) in the nearby city of Xi’an, and produced 353 million cubic feet (10 million cubic meters) of clean...