This month, a dust storm blowing out of China — the strongest in five years — brought PM2.5, toxic pollutants (SO2, NOx, O3) and microorganisms flying through the atmosphere not only in Asia, but also the western portion of the US and British Columbia. In all, 4,000 tonnes of dust will reach North America.
These toxic pollutants have all been identified as sources of respiratory diseases and lung cancer. Such storms are having a substantial impact on human health, the environment, ecosystems, weather and the climate. They have affected the health of Taiwanese, Japanese, Koreans and Americans, and it has been estimated that 3.6 million tonnes of Asian dust particles fall in Japan annually.
In the American Cancer Society’s 2016 estimate of deaths for selected cancer by state, California was No. 1 for lung cancers. Statistical studies in 1996 showed that 64,000 Americans died of respiratory disease and lung cancer that year. In 2016, the number jumped to more than 158,080, the society said.
Many scientists suspect that these numbers could be correlated with Chinese pollutants and dust storms, corresponding to China’s GDP jump over the past 20 years. They suspect that PM2.5, together with these dust storms, caused Americans to sicken and later die of lung cancer.
China’s prioritization of economic growth with relaxed environmental regulations has created tremendous volumes of pollutants that spread to its neighbors and then onward to the US.
Americans should be very angry about being victims of China’s moneymaking process over the past 20 to 30 years.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has in past decades tried to help China minimize industrial pollutants to improve the air quality globally. These issues involve environmental justice and the human rights of Taiwanese, Americans, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese.
Winston Dang is chair professor at the Taipei Medical University College of Public Health and a former Environmental Protection Administration minister.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS