The Chinese city of Xi’an has some of the worst air quality in the world. Yet its air is significantly safer than the air in U.S. cities, according to a new study.
And if you have trouble believing that, then you ought to have trouble believing Obama Environmental Protection Agency claims that U.S. ambient air quality is killing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people per year.
Chinese researchers compared data on air pollution and death rates in Xi’an from 2004 to 2008. In 2006, the World Health Organization ranked Xi’an as having the second worst air pollution in Asia, which means the second worst in the world.
The study was just published online (Jan. 3) in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Using the same sort of data and statistical analysis employed by EPA-funded air quality researchers, the Chinese researchers reported having statistically correlated every 10 microgram per cubic meter’s (μg/m3) worth of fine particulate matter (soot or PM2.5) in Xi’an’s air with a 0.2% increase in the city’s death rate.
While that sounds like a result in the statistical noise range — and it is as the mean daily death toll in Xi’an is only about 26.2 — we’re going to overlook that normally fatal flaw and, instead, momentarily embrace the result so that we can compare it with what EPA-funded researchers claim about U.S. cities.
In a 2009 study of 112 U.S. cities, EPA-funded researchers reported that every 10 μg/m3 worth of PM2.5 correlated with about a 1.0% increase in death rate. Once again this is, in reality, statistical noise. But in the fantasy world of EPA air quality science it is five times greater than what Chinese researchers reported from the second dirtiest city in the world.
But there’s more. Just how dirty is the air in Xi’an?
As measured by the Chinese researchers, the air in Xi’an is, on average, 9-10 times more polluted in terms of PM2.5 than the median PM2.5 levels of the two most polluted cities in the 112-city study (Rubidoux, CA and Los Angeles, CA).
And that dirty Chinese air, according to EPA scientific practice, is safer than U.S. air by a factor of five. This is shocking since if air pollution really was deadly, one would expect to see this phenomena operating in high gear in the respiratory horror story that Xi’an should be.
Keep in mind that EPA chief Lisa Jackson testified to Congress on Sep. 22, 2011 that:
Particulate matter [i.e., PM2.5] causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.
Leaving the fantasy land of EPA air quality science and returning to the real-world, however, clean U.S. air is axiomatically not more dangerous than filthy Chinese air and so some sort of explanation of these results is required.
The scientific and medical reality is that PM2.5 — even as high as it is in China — does not kill or hasten death.
PM 2.5 was such a public health problem in the U.S., in fact, that no one knew about it until EPA-funded researchers invented it in 1993 with the so-called “Six Cities Study” — 30 years after the Clean Air Act was enacted.
Concern for PM2.5 — the primary and virtually sole justification for recent costly EPA regulation like the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the Mercury and Toxics Standard (MATS) — has been entirely manufactured and ruthlessly exploited by the EPA for almost 20 years.
The agency has been able to get away with this scam because it has cleverly hidden key data with a clique of private researchers in academic institutions who are beyond Congressional and Freedom of Information Act reach.
Obtaining the EPA data may no longer be so important for debunking purposes, however, given the emerging reality in China.
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Wow that was strange. I just wrote an extremely long
comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear.
Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over
again. Regardless, just wanted to say fantastic blog!
Amazing! Its actually amazing piece of writing,
I have got much clear idea regarding from this post.
And Chinese studies are of course unbiased and free from political influence, by all means use that as you unquestioned baseline figure.
Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old
daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to
her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her
ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had
to tell someone!
Back in the early 1950’s I read coal ash was going to be dropped on the North Pole to end global cooling. The scare came up again in the 1970’s
But wait, there’s more! EPA is now about to further restrict the lead content presently allowed by 90%, after justifying their previous reductions based upon the claim that it reduced the I.Q. of children. Since implemented in the 1970’s, we should by now have witnessed a corresponding jump in I.Q. among the little tykes. The fact that we don’t and that its not being highlighted by Congress or the MSM is that they’re in bed together. It contributes to their power.
In the logic of greenies, Dragonfly was right saying Ruckelshaus was a good EPA director. He helped killing tens of millions of environment destroying, natural resources wasting humans!
There’s nothing wrong with the planet, there’s nothing wrong with the planet.
The planet is fine the people are fucked, difference the planet is fine.Compared to the people
the planet is doing great it’s been here for 4 1/2 billion years. Have you ever thought about
the arithmetic, the planet has been here for 4 1/2 billion(billion) years we’ve been here for
what 100,000 maybe 200,000 years. We have only been engaged in heavy industry for a
little over 200 years, 200 years vs. 4 1/2 billion years and we have the conceit to think
that somehow we’re a threat, that somehow we are going to put in jeopardy this beautiful
blue green ball that’s just floating around the sun. The planet has been through a lot worse
than us, been through all kinds of things worse than us, it’s been through earthquakes,
volcanoes, plagues, continental drifts, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, magnetic
reversal of the poles, hundreds of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and
meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, reoccurring
ice ages and we think that plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a
difference the planet isn’t going anywhere, WE ARE…. We are going away so pack your
fucking bags folks we’re all going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank
God for that, maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here but we will be long gone,
just another failed mutation, another closed end biological mistake, an evolutionary
culdesac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nu-sense. You
want to know how the planet is doing ask those people in Pompeii that are frozen into
position from volcanic ash. You want to know how the planet is doing ask the people in
Mexico City or Armenia or hundreds of other places buried under thousands of tons of
rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week, how about those people in Kilauea
Hawaii who built there homes right next to a active volcano then wonder why they have
lava in their living room. the planet will be here for a long long long time after we’re
gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself because that’s what it does it’s a self
correcting system.
Written by a great prophet
the late great George Carlin
To all the phony liberal scientist wake up and get your heads out of your dumb asses!
HANG IN THERE CHINA………………..
I wonder if a group charge of Crimes against Humanity in the Haig would make the Senior staff in the EPA think a little more clearly.
Your current President has family ties to parts of Africa. He would do more by writing to the Haig asking for charges to be brought than all the vast sums of foreign aid currently shovelled into the Swiss accounts of Africsn depots.
True, but the point being made is that subsequent occupiers of the tole have been….even less admirable.
While the consequences of their bad decisions have doubtless been vastly less horrific, their performance of the role has been even less appropriate.
Lunching with the authors and musing on the possible grant applications they may one day submit.
Oh no!
You mean that s…… potency bit was only a joke?
Now I have to cancel my travel plans.
I was looking forward to having a little bit more “vitality”
Back to the rhino horn tea.
Phantom menace.
Well said.
The UN cannot tell the difference between the real universe and a Hollywood storey.
We need the UN to keep out of things it does not understand.
Which is most things.
Your EPA is supposed to be part of the machinery of government by and for the people of your country.
And yet here again we see sickening examples of wildly unreal fantasies treated as a basis for public policy.
Those responsible MUST be held to account. The senior levels if your EPA must be held personally and particularly culpable
You suppose there’s a new maxim -“those who can, do – those who can’t edit”?
Well I know one thing for sure, the UN does cause bouts of insanity in informed folks as we read their latest attempt to take more money and power based on some phantom menace.
Apparently not according to the few studies that have been done. I say that with caution. When it’s so thick your eyes water and you have a hard time breathing then I am just as sure there are bad effects. On the other hand when were talking about micrograms per cubic meter of air I am just a sure that I am getting lied to and my wallet picked.
Thanks for at least trying Lois.
On the other hand, I was in aviation for decades and the most illiterate and mal educated people in aviation were the putative aviation editors of most every newspaper I ever read. From time to time I’d call one up about some article or other and after five minutes on the phone I could actually feel my IQ dropping. Perhaps in other areas the various editors and reporters were much better but in aviation knowledge and gun crime they generally really sucked.
I KNEW that name had something attached to it. Thanks Joseph for remembering for us all.
LOL Henry. Thanks for the morning laugh. *grin*
Dragonfly, was it not Ruckelshaus (the multi-billionaire, non-scientist and philantropist to “green’ activist groups), who overruled his own board-member, Judge Sweeney, who after a 9-months investigation of the false claims by Rachel Carson about D.D.T. could not find any evidence at all, that it causes cancer in humans, blatantly overruled him? It was Ruckelshaus, who managed to have that substance banned in 1972 and caused the deaths of some 58 million people due to malaria. D.D.T. had saved approx. 1/2 billion lives since 1942 and even till now, there has not been one proof of that corrupt claim by Rachel Carson. I questioned Ms. Lisa Jackson a few month ago, why the EPA still continues the ban, while some 1-1/2 million people, of which the majority are foetuses still in the mothers’ wombs, babies and infants, die each year from malaria. One of her managers replied to me, that although there is no proof, the W.H.O. deems D.D.T. a “probable” cause of cancer in humans. Thus not a factual cause and the EPA and the W.H.O. still continue their mass-murder! So much for Ruckelshaus being “worth his salt”. Both institutions have become truly immoral and corrupt.
Can we ship the EPA to China? It would single-handedly reverse the trade embalance within 10 years…
(Oh wait… the Chinese probably wouldn’t put up with the nonsense, nevermind)
People won’t die immediately.
People should look at 20-30 years of constant pollution, then the “deadliness” factor will emery
In the long run, the pollution will have have an effect wrt to cancer and respiratory diseases.
Common Sense.
Lois, based on what we get from the mainstream media (TV & print) indicates there are few journalist at all. Most of these people are want a be gossip columnists who want to be recognized by grocery store tabloids. These people have no professional integrity and if they don’t have time to do a story correctly then they shouldn’t do it at all. We could save forests by not printing all the tripe put out by the mainstream media and wouldn’t need all the wind turbines and solar panels if the air waves weren’t filled with crap from the mouths of so called investigative journalists. This is not a comment on your professionalism or integrity but on the media as a whole.
SIR.It is outrageous that you praise EPA boss RUCKELSHAUS. This person is the walking obscenity who willfully ignored his own agency’s eight month study on DDT,which showed beyond a doubt that the pesticide was NOT a danger to man,bird,or beast.Ruckelshaus,in his egocentric hunger for power,banned the best and safest pesticide ever made.The direct and documented result of his edict was the death of 40 million people to date;mostly children in Africa,from malaria.Entirely unrepentant and despicably arrogant,to this day,this man leads a cushy life and is apparently respected by his peers in spite of the horrific suffering and death that he is directly responsible for.
Henry is making a joke – and a very good one at that.
Let’s not forget the formaldehyde issue with the same results by CARB and the many who lost their careers over this fraud.
You’re sounding a bit like a conspiracy theorist here, and a Marxist at that. Both are equally dangerous and they do not relate to air quality.
And California continues to destroy all businesses using diesel engines by making them illegal to use or sell in the State. All over the Phantom Health Menace PHM2.5.
@Joe Gause
Please see my numerous columns at http://www.bakersfield.com/news/columnist/henry?offset=0
I am MSM, but from a small paper in the hinterlands of California.
I can’t excuse the press entirely for not following scientific studies and their ensuing regulation more closely, but in our defense, we have fewer and fewer journalists to cover more and more government antics.
And this stuff isn’t exactly easy to follow, nor understand. It takes a lot more time than most reporters are given.
A study was done recently, perhaps by Steven Mallory, looking for a respiritory ailment death cluster in Allegheny County PA — home of the Pittsburgh steel mills that blackened the noon sky on a cloudless day. Surprisingly the health of the resdidents of the worst days of Pittsburgh’s worst air pollution days seemed better then the national average; they lived longer and had fewer lung problems. Natural selection, or a lack of cause and effect?
Why aren’t news stories like this reported in the mainstream media? Is it because the MSM is mostly leftist controlled? Leftists propagate blatant lies, and try to supppress any facts that refute these lies. The fourth estate, championed in former times as a checkmate on untruthfulness, has come to a sorry state.
I worked for EPA for 25 years in the P&TSB starting in 1973. If EPA had been required to justify by good science and peer review each of the rules and regulations they have augmented, 75% plus would never have seen the light of day. Political footballs and self-aggrandizement by the people in the ivory tower [Waterside Mall] was more important. Ruckleshaus was the only administrator worth his salt. Sorry if I spelt his name wrong. That was a long time ago.
Environmental Health Perspectives is a government publication and one might wonder where the editors and referees were.
Obviously, Steve Milloy has forgotten that Communist air particulates are “aerosolized mineral supplements” that promote health, vigor, and sexual potency. Only running-dog-lackey Capitalist air particulates disproportionately enervate and poison innocent proletarian infants, widows, and Heroes of the People.
I don’t need to tell you this study from China shows that the EPA and the air pollution reserachers that are funded by the EPA and its surrogates are now exposed as data torturers working in the range of day to day variability of death rates and reporting what amounts to nothing. Absolutely nothing.
If the air pollution studied caused any deaths, a 5 fold increase in pollution would have an impact. As it is would the EPA claim that air pollution in this city in China is less toxic?
Thanks for monitoring this insanity, the EPA scientific and policy misconduct is exposed whenever a serious analysis if performed on their data dredging. .
John Dale Dunn MD JD
Brownwood TX