China Exports Pollution to US, Study Finds

Pollution knows no borders. A study by nine researchers in three nations quantifies “how air pollution in the United States is affected by China’s production of goods for export and by global consumer demand for those goods,” reports Edward Wongjan for the New York Times: “The scientists wrote that ‘outsourcing production to China does not always relieve consumers in the United States – or for that matter many countries in the Northern Hemisphere – from the environmental impacts of air pollution.’” Outsourcing manufacturing shifted pollution away from the east coast of the United States closer to the country’s west coast. US health improved overall because the west coast is less densely populated than the east coast. China’s pollution represents but a small percentage of US pollution, and the nation generates plenty of its own pollution. Pollutants like black carbon have been linked to asthma, cancer and heart disease, Wongjan reports, and coal-burning factories are a major source of pollutants and emissions that contribute to climate change. – YaleGlobal