BEIJING — China is home to 16 of the planet’s 20 most heavily polluted cities — a noxious byproduct of its double-digit economic growth. Now researchers have worse news for the nation’s beleaguered lower classes: The air inside their homes is as much as 10 times worse than the gloom outside.
Seven of 10 homes still burn suffocating coal and wood for heat, and half of Chinese men smoke — a toxic combination of indoor pollution that raises dire questions about the fate of this industrial giant’s long- term public health.
Over the next quarter-century, 83 million Chinese will die from lung cancer and respiratory ailments without the reduction of cigarette smoking and indoor fuel-burning, a new study by Harvard’s School of Public Health warns.
“In many places in rural China, the roads are good, people now have cellphones and electricity, but residents are still cooking and heating with the same fuel they have used for centuries,” said Majid Ezzati, an associate professor of international health and senior author of the study. “And as a result, people are dying.”
In an article published this month in The Lancet, the Harvard team also concludes that programs to reduce smoking and household use of biomass fuels and coal for cooking and heating could significantly reduce the deaths.
The question, researchers say, is whether the Chinese government has the political willpower to enact sound public health policy. Experts within China agree that the government has not publicized the extent of the danger.
