A UN report says it will cost up to $1bn and take 30 years to clean up the damage done by decades of drilling by Shell.

Oil exploration in Nigeria's south for several decades has had a debilitating effect on the environment of the region.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmI3xjZk_y0

Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, has been accused of serious failures in its handling of the pollution in the Niger Delta and shirking its responsibility.

Activists have demanded that Shell's licence be revoked for the environmental disaster.

But with 90 per cent of the government's revenue coming from petroleum exports, oil companies seem to have clear political leverage over the issue.

Enough of all these disasters. It is time to go for clean energy resources even though expensive. This is just another example that nuclear power is a totally unrealiable source of energy. Who took the decision to build nuclear power plants in the most seismic area of the world? are we nuts?
It sounds ironic the fact that Japanese didn't get fed up with atomic power after second world war. They should have learned from the bitter lesson about atomic energy..
Lets just hope the situation don't get worst but the informations are still unclear. An aggravation of the current situation might result in a enormous natural disaster that might potentially contaminate all the pacific area region.

Tokyo (CNN) -- While saying there are no indications yet of dangerously high radiation levels in the atmosphere, a Japanese government official said Sunday that there is a "possibility of a meltdown" at two of the country's nuclear reactors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that officials still do not know if there have been meltdowns in the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear facility in northeast Japan. But as they attempt to cool down radioactive material and release pressure inside the reactors, he said authorities were working under the presumption that such meltdowns have taken place.

"We do believe that there is a possibility that meltdown has occurred. It is inside the reactor. We can't see. However, we are assuming that a meltdown has occurred," he said of the No. 1 reactor. "And with reactor No. 3, we are also assuming that the possibility of a meltdown as we carry out measures."

A meltdown is a catastrophic failure of the reactor core, with a potential for widespread radiation release.

Edano's comments confirmed an earlier report from an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, who had told CNN, "we see the possibility of a meltdown."

Though Toshihiro Bannai, director of the agency's international affairs office, said engineers have been unable to get close enough to the core to know what's going on, he based his conclusion on the fact that they measured radioactive isotopes in the air Saturday night.

"What we have seen is only the slight indication from a monitoring post of cesium and iodine," he said.

But Bannai added that he didn't believe a disaster was looming.

"We actually have very good confidence that we will resolve this," he said.

"We are continuing to monitor the radiation, but it is (under) control," he said.

Edano said that nine people have tested positive for high radiation levels on their skin and clothing, with doctors now trying to determine if they were impacted internally. Medical care, including radiation screening, will be offered to those who are being evacuated from the nuclear zone, the secretary added.

The Japanese government was preparing to distribute iodine tablets to residents, the IAEA said. Iodine is commonly recommended to block the uptake by the thyroid gland of radioactive iodine.

The problems at the Daiichi plant began Friday, when the 8.9-magnitude quake struck off the eastern shore of Miyagi Prefecture. The quake forced the automatic shutdown of the plant's nuclear reactors and knocked out the main cooling system, according to the country's nuclear agency.

A tsunami resulting from the quake then washed over the site, knocking out backup generators that pumped water into the reactor containment unit to keep the nuclear fuel cool.

Edano said that there have not been any leaks of radioactive material at either of the affected plants. Authorities deliberately have let out radioactive steam in order to alleviate growing pressure inside both of the affected reactors.

Pressure had been mounting inside the reactors as steam built up inside, because water meant to cool the fuel rods was boiling.

As of Sunday morning, winds in northeast Japan were blowing out to sea at 5-15 mph, said CNN Meteorologist Taylor Ward. But they were expected to reverse direction by Monday night, he said. The Daiichi plant is located about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Plant officials are also injecting sea water and boron into the plant in an effort to cool its nuclear fuel and stop any reactions.

Boron, a chemical element, was being added to the water "to sort of stymie other potential nuclear reactions," according to Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy. He described the plan to use salt water as "an act of desparation" by Japanese authorities, who seemed unable to deliver fresh water or plain water to cool the reactor and stabilize it.

Earlier, Edano had pointed out another potential challenge -- saying, without elaboration, that "some of the readings in the measurement equipment were not accurate."

The detection of a cesium isotope -- as noted by Bannai -- indicates that the reactors' nuclear fuel cladding has failed, said Ken Bergeron, a physicist and former scientist at Sandia National Laboratories.

"Now we have to hope that the containment building will succeed in preventing major amounts of radioactivity" from escaping, he said. Fukushima Daiichi facility has such a building -- something that Chernobyl, the Soviet nuclear plant that famously melted down in 1986, did not have.

Cesium 137 can remain dangerous for 600 years and is associated with a number of cancers, said Dr. Ira Helfand, a member of the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Some experts said the flow of information from the agency has not been fast enough.

But IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano defended the Japanese response. "I know the Japanese authorities are working their hardest to gather the necessary details and ensure safety under difficult and constantly evolving circumstances," he said in a statement.

If the effort to cool the nuclear fuel inside the reactor fails completely -- a scenario experts who have spoken to CNN say is unlikely -- the resulting release of radiation could cause enormous damage to the plant or release radiation into the atmosphere or water. That could lead to widespread cancer and other health problems, experts say.

Authorities have downplayerd such a scenario, insisting the situation appears under control and that radiation levels in the air are dangerous. Still, as what they described as "a precuation," more than 200,000 people who live within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the plant have been ordered to leave the area. A similar evacuation order has been issued for those with 10 kilometers of the Fukashima Daini nuclear facility, a separate plant also in Fukashima prefecture.

Even absent this, nuclear materials expert Joseph Cirincione -- president of the U.S.-based Ploughshares Fund, a firm involved in security and peace funding -- ranks this scenario third, behind Chernobyl and the 1979 partial meltdown of a reactor core at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, among history's worst nuclear power crises.

Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear power, with 54 plants and another eight slated for construction, said Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action, an environmental group. All are located in "very seismic" areas, she said.

While experts acknowledged that Japan's nuclear program is very well respected, physicist Ken Bergeron saying that now "we're in uncharted territory."

"The bottom line is that we just don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of days and, frankly, neither do the people who run the system," added Dr. Ira Helfand, a member of the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

What we do know, he added, is that Japan's nuclear facilities are "way out of whack."

China has the world's highest wind power capacity after adding 62 percent or 16 gigawatts (GW) in new capacity last year, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday.

The country's total installed wind power capacity reached 41.8 GW at the end of last year, the report said, citing Li Junfeng, secretary general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Installed wind capacity in the United States increased by about 5 GW to 40.2 GW at the end of 2010, the report said, citing data from the Global Wind Energy Council.
The report did not say how much of Chinese capacity was able to access power transmission and distribution networks.

Wind power capacity connected to grid networks totaled 22.94 GW at the end of August last year, according to the China Electricity Council.
Some Chinese wind farms have been working far below capacity as local grid capacity was unable to accommodate the rising number of intermittent energy sources. Some wind turbines have stood idle from day one because of a lack of grid access.

China is considering ways to ensure grid connections for output generated from planned wind power capacity of 90 GW by 2015, China's National Energy Administration has said.

China would start building the second-phase of the 5 GW Jiuquan wind power project in Gansu province, the 2 GW Hami wind power project in Xinjiang, a 2 GW Kailu project in Inner Mongolia and the 1.5 GW Tongyu project in Jilin province this year, the Xinhua report said.

It would also kick off construction of a 1 GW offshore wind-power project in Jiangsu province and speed up the second phase of the East Sea Bridge offshore wind farm in Shanghai, the report added.

A factory in the eastern province of Anhui operated illegally for years a few feet away from homes. In 2010 they nine cases of lead pollution were officially recorded. The government is in trouble, as evidenced by the conviction of the activist who exposed the scandal of melamine-tainted milk.

Beijing - Another pollution scandal in China, and in this case the victims are children: 24 children aged between nine months and 16 years were hospitalized for lead poisoning. About 200 children in the town of Gaohe in the eastern province of Anhui suffer from an excessive concentration of lead in their blood. This is the latest in a long series of incidents of pollution, often with heavy metals, which have affected the provinces of Shandong, Hunan, Shaanxi, Jiangsu and Guangdong in the past two years.

The county government accuses Gahoe Boru battery factory for the pollution. The factory has been operating illegally since 2007 in the immediate vicinity of a residential area. The authorities said that the plant was closed last month, when the first case of pollution was discovered. But residents say that the factory was still active until January 5. And complain that the authorities have not closed another battery factory nearby, which they consider to be another major source of pollution. Both plants are a few dozen meters away from the houses, and residents say they have lived for years in fear of being poisoned.

Environmentalists China last year said that other cases of poisoning are destined to emerge as a result of the increasing dispersal of toxic metals including mercury, arsenic, lead, chromium and cadmium, particularly in rivers and lakes.

The issue of pollution in China came to international prominence when Zhao Lianhai denounced the scandal of melamine-tainted milk, a substance added to the milk powder milk to make it appear richer in protein. Zhao Lianhai is the father of one of the 300 thousand children suffering from kidney stones due to melamine, which has killed at least six of them.

From 2008 onwards Zhao created an opinion group and a blog to claim compensation for damages. Last November he was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for "disturbing public order". (12/29/2010 see: Activist for children affected by melamine toxic milk released, but "self-confessed"). This week, Zhang Ping, director of the Economic Commission for national development and reform in Chinese provinces warned against aspiring to economic growth at any cost. In 2010 there were nine cases of lead pollution recorded in the country. Other episodes - 300 kg of thallium discharged into a river in the southern province of Guangdong indicates the seriousness of the problem and the difficulty of the authorities in addressing the issue of environmental protection.

(AsiaNews / Agencies)

Like many villages in China’s industrial heartland, Qiugang — a hamlet of nearly 1,900 people in Anhui province — has long suffered from runaway pollution from nearby factories. In Qiugang’s case, three major enterprises with little or no pollution controls churned out chemicals, pesticides, and dyes, turning the local river black, killing fish and wildlife, and filling the air with foul fumes that burned residents’ eyes and throats and sickened children.

The pollution from the Jiucailuo Chemical plant became so egregious that in 2007, Qiugang’s residents — working with a fledgling environmental group, Green Anhui — began to try to do something about it. Their efforts soon attracted the attention of Chinese-American filmmaker Ruby Yang, who with cinematographer Guan Xin and longtime collaborator Thomas Lennon, spent the ensuing three years chronicling the struggle of Qiugang’s increasingly emboldened population to curb the pollution that was poisoning them in their homes, schools, and fields.

This exclusive e360 video report, “The Warriors of Qiugang” — co-produced by Yale Environment 360 — tells the story of how the villagers fought to transform their environment, and, in the process, found themselves transformed as well.

The 39-minute video focuses on an unlikely hero — farmer Zhang Gongli, now almost 60, who leads the village’s fight to shut down the chemical plant. Soft-spoken and easy-going, but with a backbone of steel, Zhang — who has only a middle-school education — quickly learns how to use China’s more stringent federal environmental laws to put pressure on the factory owners and their cronies in local and regional government.

“We are sorry to be born in this place,” says Zhang, “but we had no choice. This was forced upon us.”

The camera follows Zhang as he deals with threats from local thugs, rallies his neighbors, and travels to Beijing, where he attends a heady meeting of China’s emerging environmental movement. Zhang — like so many other Chinese — finds himself plunged into a new and wholly unfamiliar world.

“I feel scared — I really don’t want to be a hero,” Zhang says as he rides the train to Beijing. “But the next generation will suffer. We risk our lives for their happiness.”

Watch the video

If you're a bit of a slob like me, you are wearing jeans to work today, and if, like me, you're a bit of a slob who doesn't manage hedge funds, your jeans are fairly run of the mill. My H&M specials today were made in Pakistan. But most of my other jeans are made across Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor in southern China, and may very well have been made in Xintang, the so-called Blue Jeans Capital of the World.

Xintang is one of many industrial towns on the booming Pearl River Delta, and one of 133 textile centers that have sprung up in China in the past decade. The specialty in the villages of Xintang is denim. A lot of denim — the town makes about 260 million pairs of jeans annually, roughly equivalent to 40% of the jeans sold in the U.S. in a year.

Textiles are a dirty business. Many fabric dyes contain hazardous chemicals like mercury, cadmium and lead, and in the Pearl River area, the industry has been criticized for years for dumping its wastewater into waterways. Xintang's local government, which is responsible for monitoring the environmental impact of its industry, has cracked down on polluting textile factories in recent years. But, as a Greenpeace China report released today reveals, simply moving the factories to new locations has only relocated the problem, not solved it.

The report, which examines the textile industry's impact on two towns in Guangdong province, found that when the dying and washing plants were shut down and relocated from Dadun, one of the first villages in Xintang to start in the denim trade, to the village of Xizhou, the environmental impact moved with it. As the waters around Dadun have started to lose the stink of dye and factory discharge, the river encircling Xizhou, which flows into a tributary of the Pearl, has become unusable since denim moved to town. “Older people used to drink from the water and drink from it and swim in it,” says Mariah Zhao, a Greenpeace campaigner who helped conduct the report's field research from April to October. “We talked to a teenager and she couldn't remember the river being clean.”

Greenpeace submitted water and sediment samples from Xintang and another textile town, Gurao (China's bra capital), to an independent laboratory for heavy metal analysis. In 17 of the 21 samples submitted, heavy metal traces were found. In one sediment sample from Xintang, cadmium concentrations were 128 times above China's environmental standards. Cadmium exposure, at its worst, can cause lung disease, kidney disease and other forms of cancer.

Greenpeace did not encounter inordinately high rates of cancer in Xintang or Gurao, as are found in other some other industrial areas throughout the country, but those living and working in close proximity to the denim plants attributed health problems from persistant skin rashes to infertility to the jeans business. Chinese migrant workers who come by the millions to work in the Pearl River Delta's factories are the worst affected, exposed on a daily basis to the chemicals in their rawest forms in their workplace, and then going home at night to sleep and eat in the closest proximity to the highly polluted waters. As one Xintang worker from the central province of Sichuan told Greenpeace: “Everyone says that people who work in dyeing and washing have reproductive fertility problems. My cousin once worked in a dyeing plant. He died of pleurisy [a lung disease.]”

Zhao of Greenpeace says jeans factories have options, such as using dye subsitutes that do not contain harmful chemicals and upgrading their waste disposal systems. She also says the local government could be doing more to give residents and workers better information. “The local government is responsible to regularly sample and monitor these factories, and from our point of view, they are also responsible to get the information of how much and what kind of chemicals are released in the production process and to disclose the information to the public,” Zhao says. “They are not doing enough. There are thousands of factories in that area. The information out there is quite limited.”

A senior Chinese official said in 2007 that much of the country's local economic data are unreliable, according to a leaked diplomatic cable published by the WikiLeaks website.

A construction site in Liaoning province, where Vice Premier Li Keqiang was Communist Party secretary in 2007

The official, Li Keqiang, was at the time Communist Party secretary of the northeastern province of Liaoning, and has since been promoted to vice premier. Since landing that position, he has overseen many of the central government's efforts to improve the quality of its economic statistics, which continue to face many questions over their accuracy and consistency.

Mr. Li is considered the top contender to take over as premier, the top economic policy-making position, when the current head of government, Wen Jiabao, steps down in early 2013. The reported comments provide intriguing context for his current role, which among other tasks include overseeing the ongoing nationwide population census.

China's Foreign Ministry has said it will not comment on the content of the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. The leaked cable reports comments Mr. Li made in a dinner in Beijing with then-U.S. Ambassador Clark Randt on March 12, 2007. His remarks focused on the challenges of administering the province of Liaoning, which because of its legacy of failed state-owned enterprises was burdened with a large number of unemployed workers.

"When evaluating Liaoning's economy, he focuses on three figures: 1) electricity consumption, which was up 10% in Liaoning last year; 2) volume of rail cargo, which is fairly accurate because fees are charged for each unit of weight; and 3) amount of loans disbursed, which also tends to be accurate given the interest fees charged," the cable says.

"By looking at these three figures, Li said he can measure with relative accuracy the speed of economic growth. All other figures, especially GDP statistics, are 'for reference only,' he said smiling," the cable reads. "GDP figures are 'man-made' and therefore unreliable," the cable paraphrases Mr. Li as saying.

Analysts have long questioned the reliability of economic figures produced by local governments in China. Because local officials' careers often depend on how well the economy in their jurisdiction is performing, there is an incentive for them to report positive figures.

Many private-sector analysts also closely track the indicators reportedly favored by Mr. Li, which are thought to reflect real activity and be less subject to political influence.

The nationwide gross domestic product figures published by the National Bureau of Statistics are not directly based on the provincial GDP figures and attempt to correct for some of their biases. Indeed, almost all of China's provinces consistently report GDP growth rates above the national average.

The NBS, while defending the nationwide figures it produces as fundamentally accurate, has sought more influence over the numbers compiled by local authorities.

In his public comments about economic statistics, Mr. Li also has repeatedly stressed the importance of gathering accurate information.

"Data live and die by their quality," he said at a government meeting in early 2009, urging accuracy in a count of the nation's businesses and their economic activities. "Statistical data provide effective support to our efforts to promote stable and relatively fast economic growth over the long term."

More recently, in a speech last month on the census, Mr Li said:

"We are a large developing country with a population of more than a billion people, so accurately understanding the status of our population and its changes helps us better make and implement economic and social policies."

BEIJING - Xu Yinxian, a 58-year-old cleaner dressed in an orange uniform, appears in a residential community near the Fourth North Ring Road in Beijing every morning and afternoon.

He removes garbage from dustbins on which the signs of "recycle" and "not-recycle" are barely legible. Xu rides his tricycle with the waste to a nearby building where Jing Jianchun of the Chaoyang Environmental Sanitation Administration is waiting for him in his truck, ready to set out for Datun, a stopover station in northern Beijing. Jing dumps his vehicle's garbage at a waste processing facility there, where it is sorted into what is suitable for landfill and what can be recycled.

"It appears the majority of local residents pay no heed to signs indicating where recyclable and non-recyclable waste should go and just throw their refuse in whatever dustbin they like," Xu said. "The 'recycle' and 'not-recycle' litter bins make no difference."

Plastic bottles and pop cans had already been scavenged, so he simply sent the remainder to Jing's truck.

Xu and Jing are among hundreds of thousands of sanitation employees who work from as early as 5 am until 3 pm every day in Beijing.

"Useful waste will be separated and the remainder is sent to Beijing's largest landfill site, Asuwei, near Xiaotangshan to the north of Beijing," said another man surnamed Zhang from the sanitation administration.

Zhang's trailer is loaded with 20 tons of garbage. The vehicle cost 1 million yuan (S$196,400) and its storage area is watertight.

After one-and-a-half hours, he arrives at Asuwei. Not far from the gate, workers at a garbage sorting station with eight workshops are busy. A 20-meter high hill, several hundred meters long and covered in grass and plastic, is nearby.

"The hill is made up of garbage, and the plastic sheets covering its surface are used to prevent the smell from disseminating," Zhang said.

Garbage from Zhang's trailer is loaded on to a conveyer belt for more manual sorting. Anything of no use is dumped in a hole in the hill, where it is partly burned.

China is a country with one of the most challenging problems. Every year 150 million tons of garbage are produced, making up 30.6 percent of the world's annual total, Beijing-based Global Entrepreneur magazine reported in August.

According to the municipal government, Beijing's population of approximately 20 million produces nearly 20,000 tons of garbage every day, overburdening its 23 waste treatment plants. The municipal government plans to have 40 plants, including the Asuwei project, by 2015, at a cost of 10 billion yuan.

"The landfill will be full in three years," said Zhang. "There was a plan to build a garbage incineration plant here but residents strongly protested so it was ditched."

The authorities in August 2009 revealed a plan to build the $121 million Asuwei garbage incineration plant near Xiaotangshan without having sought public approval. Residents staged a protest when they heard the news in September.

Swedish-based Tetra Pak is the world's largest packaging company by sales with 30 billion beverage cartons produced in 2009. Yang Bin, vice-president of Tetra Pak China, said the company had thought hard how to deal with used cartons.

She said Tetra Pak China has cooperated with research institutions to develop technology to recycle its cartons.

Yang said the company also works with recycling organizations and paper mills and supported them with free technology and facilities.

"If we have better refuse sorting, less poisonous gases will be produced by burning," said Yang. "Utilizing the most advanced incinerator is useless if the refuse isn't sorted."

Lianhe Dingsheng, a garbage recycling company located in southern Beijing, is one of Tetra Pak's partners. Its head of operations, Zhang Xuefei said the main challenge they faced was the lack of refuse sorting.

"As long as people sort wet waste from dry waste, we can pick up more cartons and send them to paper mills for re-manufacturing," Zhang, 28, said.

Dry waste includes paper, glass, tin cans, and cardboard. Wet waste refers to organic waste such as vegetable peel and leftover food.

Fulun Paper Mill in Fuyang, Zhejiang province, is Tetra Pak China's largest partner. It has collected 2 billion beverage cartons and turned them into 13,500 tons of paper, 4,500 tons of plastic and 1,120 tons of aluminum. The amount of paper produced would require 220,000 trees and the recycling process saves 1.4 million tons of water, 14,000 tons of petroleum, 34,000 tons of bauxite and 6.7 hectares of waste landfill.

Fulun's production capability is expected to be 100,000 tons by the end of the year from its current 40,000 tons. In consequence, the company is offering rewards to collectors to pick up more beverage cartons. However, despite the increase in financial outlay, the results have not improved much.

"It costs a lot to set up a system for certain types of valuable waste," Yang said. "We have tried our best to increase the recycling rate by 20 per cent, but a better result is hard to achieve without the entire society playing its part."

In May, the municipal government issued a paper on the treatment of domestic refuse in which it confirmed the construction and operation of waste landfill and incineration plants and made the sorting of refuse compulsory.

Yang said the government should be more resolute on the issue. "Refuse sorting should not only be pulled, but it should also be pushed," she said.

She said the public only regarded waste that can be sold as valuable waste. But waste such as empty shampoo bottles is also valuable even though they sell for a low price. Yang argued therefore that the government should introduce compulsory measures to recycle rubbish.

After visiting the urban best practices area at the Shanghai Expo, Yang said the Taipei Case Pavilion demonstrating its garbage recycling system impressed her.

In 1996, when nearly 3,000 tons of garbage was being buried in Taipei every day, the city implemented a strict garbage collection system requiring residents to dispose of their garbage only into garbage trucks which visited residential areas at certain hours every day. No dustbins were provided in these areas.

To reduce and reuse garbage, Taipei implemented a system of charging for every bag of rubbish collected in July 2000. Since then, citizens have been required to dispose of their non-recyclable waste in designated bags sold by the local government. A bag with a capacity of 3.3 liters of waste costs around 3.3 yuan (S$0.65).

Thanks to the new plan, Taipei's household garbage volume fell 67 per cent from 2000 to 2009 to around 1,000 metric tons a day. Over the same period, the volume of recycled material grew from just 2.4 per cent of total waste to 45 percent.

Yang said the government should more fully educate the public to sort refuse so they know what can be recycled.

Wang Weiping, an expert in waste policy and a consultant to the Beijing government, told People's Daily that besides sorting refuse, the government should also have vehicles for different types of waste and construct corresponding processing factories and different landfill and burning facilities.

Wang said the current management focus was biased; the government invested much in purchasing garbage vehicles, dustbins and constructing landfill and incineration plants, putting the final stages of refuse administration under high pressure.

"The essential thing is to decrease waste by managing the sorting stage at community level and placing the stress on transporting, processing and re-manufacturing," Wang said.

He added that refuse sorting had a long way to go; Japan took 15 years to implement refuse sorting and 17 percent people are still not following the rules. Twenty percent of Germans do not separate their rubbish after eight years of government effort.

"Knowledge and action should go hand in hand. Only by this way can the public learn to sort better and better," said Wang.

To get a sense of how China’s air quality compares with the rest of the world, there’s a new map of global air-particulate pollution from Canadian scientists using National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite data. The verdict: It doesn’t look good.

Eastern China’s industrial area is just about the reddest part of the map, meaning it has the highest concentration of particulates. That doesn’t bode well for the hundreds of millions of people there. And if you’re in the middle of that red zone, you’d have to travel far afield for fresh air.

The researchers, Aaron van Donkelaar and Randall Martin at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, used U.S. space-agency satellite data to measure particulate matter across the globe, figuring ground-based detection is nonexistent or spotty in many areas. The map was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

It’s important to note that the data used for this map are derived from 2001 to 2006. But as The Wall Street Journal noted in July, authorities affirmed that China’s air quality continues to get worse, not better.

According to the NASA post, health officials say fine particulates can get past the body’s hair-like cilia defenses, penetrate the lungs and blood, and lead to chronic diseases, such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and bronchitis.

An Overhead View of China’s Pollution - China Real Time Report - WSJ.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - About 2 thousand angry rural people blocked the highway bridge that passes near Nangang (Shucheng County, Anhui), in July 24 to protest against a new landfill that the municipality wants to place upstream of a river which provides drinking water. Hundreds of police intervened resulting in violent clashes. In China's booming economy development takes pride of place over respect for the environment and health of the population, who are now in open and violent struggle to defend basic rights like drinking water and clean air.

The Nangang government today assured that it has abandoned the controversial project, which threatened the drinking water of over 50 thousand inhabitants along the river. After the announcement the protests were called off.

Meanwhile, photographs of protests and clashes are circulating the web, of protesters with bitterly ironic placards that state " We would rather fight to the death than be poisoned to death," We would rather fight to the death than be poisoned to death " and "Please do not harm the residents of Nangang”. Other photos show clashes with police armed with truncheons and pepper spray. There are women and elderly who are kneeling, begging the government to abandon the project, at least 2 of them were then hit by the police. Eyewitnesses told the� Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy that the police even beat up small children.

Beijing wants to adopt specific pollution control measures but is afraid to decrease industry: for example, the China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, a public consultation body of, has warned that new environmental protection measures will increase the cost of manufactured metallurgical goods by at least 10%. Having founded the development on the indiscriminate exploitation of the environment and migrants, now Beijing has difficulty reconciling the inevitable environmental needs with the continuation of rapid economic growth.

But experts caution that environmental damage in the country is growing in quantity and severity. In the 1st half of 2010, environmental incidents increased by 98.1% compared to 2009 and there were some real disasters.

In July alone,� Zijin Mining Group Co., a leading gold and copper mining company, poured over 9100 cubic meters of harmful waste into the river Ting, killing more than 2,300 tonnes of fish and destroying the fishing industry in the area. On July 16, the explosion of two pipes and a tank of oil at sea in the a major oil port in Dalian, caused the loss of 1,500 tonnes of crude oil. The port was closed for several days.

Ma Jun, founder of the� Institute of Public Environmental Affairs, told� Bloomberg that " if China doesn’t address the environmental issues when the economy is growing fast, it might become a destabilizing factor in the society". "The Chinese public is increasingly aware and vocal about the heavy metal pollution brought on by refineries and smelters.".

Anche il ministro per l’Ambiente riconosce che “c’è conflitto tra un rapido sviluppo economico e la capacità dell’ambiente di assorbire” gli effetti. Una sua indagine ha accertato che nel 2009 sono finiti nella acque 58,9 miliardi di tonnellate di rifiuti liquidi, contenenti petrolio, azoto e manganese, circa il 3% in più del 2008.

Even the Minister for the Environment recognizes that " Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb " the effects. Its inquiry found that in 2009 58.9 billion tons of liquid wastes containing oil, nitrogen and manganese was dumped in the water system, about 3% more than in 2008.

There is also controversy at the absence of contingency plans in case of environmental disasters. In Dalian, about 8 thousand public employees and 37 thousand volunteers, especially local fishermen scooped up the crude oil without protection, without masks against the noxious fumes and no gloves to protect from benzene that penetrates the skin and is harmful to the digestive system. They collected the oil with pieces of cloth, recovered with sticks and squeezed it into buckets with their bare hands.

Zhong Yu, coordinator of� Greenpeace China, praised the army of volunteers who cleaned the sea of oil;" They have been working tirelessly for more than a week without receiving any apology or compensation from the oil companies. They were not given, or even advised to wear, carbonic masks from the government, which are cheap and available anywhere”. "It's just pathetic."