The inspiration from the history of air pollution control in London
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Figure 1 London before and after the Administration |
The British capital London is located at the mouth of the Thames, for many years by the intersection of the West and the North Atlantic warm and humid climate, in addition to basin, day and night temperature difference is large, air flow is poor, easy to form fog weather, and the cycle, JingJiuBuSan become London unique landscape, the "fog" London is famous in the world. But for the first time after the industrial revolution, Britain's industrial rapid development, on both sides of the river Thames factory clouds, with coal as the main fuel steam engine put into use a large number of; and at that time, because of limited technical level, coal combustion rate is low, the plant emissions of a large amount of waste gas and fog mixed together, enveloped in the air over the city, originally white mist into a piece of haze. Since then, the "fog" has become synonymous with air pollution. December 1952 5-10 days, these long gathered haze eventually lead to the history of the famous London smog event". In this article, a look at a video clip of the incident.
According to the environmental Kuznets curve theory (Fig. 2), the degradation of environmental quality and economic development (per capita income level) showed inverted U curve relationship. In the early stage of economic development, the degree of environmental degradation increased with the economic growth, until the extreme; and then with the transformation of the industrial structure, the degree of environmental pollution will gradually slow down with the per capita income. Comparison given in Figure 2 from Britain in the 1950s and China 2010 economic point of view, regardless of per capita GDP and the three production ratio and the energy structure in the 20th century in the 1950s Britain and the present stage of China, there are many similarities. The rapid development of economy and the serious air pollution seems to show that our country's environmental damage has been near the Kuznets curve of the key "turning point"". Therefore, it is very important to improve the air quality of our country by taking the essence of the experience of the air control in other countries.
Let us to Beijing in January 2013 heavy haze event as an example to take a closer look at the similarities and differences between China's air pollution and smog of London event. The same place is both in the winter, and during the event of pollution, the two cities are subject to high pressure control (Figure 2). Winter diffusion condition is not good, easy to form the inversion layer (is simply the surface of low temperature, high temperature above, which made the pollutants is difficult to spread); under the control of the high pressure system, the ground for the downdraft, pollutants in the air near the ground difficult to to the movement of an upper air and dilution, eventually leading to pollutants in surface accumulation. Different place is due to the different emission sources, pollution causes, and thus lead to different types of pollutants. In London smog event is mainly a emissions of soot pollution (SO2 and black smoke, etc.); while the haze in Beijing is mainly the PM2.5, both a soot emissions, including particulate matter formed by atmospheric chemical process for the second time, compound pollution. Pollution from the point of view, the pollution in London event more extreme, a short period of time resulted in the more than ten thousand people were killed; Beijing within a month experienced four pollution process (only five days of air quality reaching grade II standard), 15% of the country's land is haze covered, the affected population up to 800 million people. Generally speaking, our country's air pollution event scale is bigger, the time is longer, the frequency is higher, and the cause of formation is more complex, so the road of our country's air treatment is certainly more difficult, the twists and turns. However, like in the video said that air pollution is the common responsibility of the whole society, as long as every one of us in their social roles the courage to play, as active, perhaps in the near future, we can finally "poke haze see the sky"!
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Figure 2 Comparison of the past London and Beijing today |