Made in China: Our Toxic, Imported Air Pollution | Pollution | DISCOVER Magazine
Mercury, sulfates, ozone, black carbon, flu-laced desert dust. Even as America
tightens emission standards, the
fast-growing economies of Asia
are filling the air with hazardous components that
circumnavigate the globe.
“There is no place called away.” It is a statement worthy of
Gertrude Stein, but University of Washington atmospheric chemist
Dan Jaffe says it with conviction: None of the contamination we pump into the air just disappears. It might get diluted, blended, or chemically transformed, but it has to go somewhere. And when it comes to pollutants produced by the booming economies of East Asia, that somewhere often means right here, the mainland of the United States.
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