The suffocating smog that blanketed swathes of China is now hitting parts of Japan, sparking warnings yesterday of health risks for the young and the sick.
The Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s Web site has been overloaded as worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way.
“Access to our air pollution monitoring system has been almost impossible since last week and the telephone here has been constantly ringing because worried people keep asking us about the impact on health,” a ministry official said.
Pictures of Beijing and other Chinese cities shrouded in thick, choking smog played out across television screens in Japan last week.
News programs have broadcast maps showing a swirl of pollution gathering strength across China and then spreading out over the ocean toward Japan.
Pinks, reds and oranges that denote the highest concentrations form a finger of smog that inches upward to the main southern island of Kyushu.
Relations between Tokyo and Beijing are already strained, over the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), claimed by Taiwan, China and Japan, which calls them the Senkakus. On the streets of Tokyo, reaction was tart.
“China is our neighbor and all sorts of problems happen between us all the time,” Takaharu Abiko, 50, said. “It is very worrying. This is dangerous pollution, like poison, and we can’t protect ourselves. It’s scary.”
Japanese officials were coy about lumping all the blame on their huge neighbor, but Yasushi Nakajima of the environment ministry said: “We can’t deny there is an impact from pollution in China.”
Air pollution over the west of Japan has exceeded government limits over the past few days, with tiny particulate matter a problem, Atsushi Shimizu of Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) said.
Prevailing winds from the west bring airborne particles from the Asian mainland, he said.
Of specific concern is the concentration of particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, which has been as high as 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air over recent days in northern Kyushu. The government’s safety limit is 35 micrograms.
Yellow sand from the deserts of Mongolia and China is a known source of these particles, as are exhausts from cars and smoke from factories.
“At this time of year they are definitely not yellow sand, so they’re toxic particles,” Shimizu said, adding that “people with respiratory diseases should be careful.”
Toshihiko Takemura, an associate professor of Kyushu University who runs another air pollution monitoring site, said “the impact of air pollution originating from China on Japan was scientifically discovered more than a decade ago.”
“Especially in Kyushu, the level of air pollution has been detectable in everyday lives since a few years ago,” he told reporters. “People in eastern and northern Japan are now belatedly noticing the cross-border air pollution.”
Takemura added that pollution in Japan over the past few days has not been quite as bad as it was in February 2011, when “very hazy days continued for several days in western Japan.”
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS