I realized that when talking about air pollution, many people will automatically equal it with CO2 pollution, global warming and the contamination brought by large chemical plants. However, most of us will ignore the huge damage brought by large-scale construction projects. The pollution did by large projects is actually much larger and common than what did by chemical plants domestically, especially in developing countries. True, one chemical plants makes more pollution than one large scale construction project and the pollution done by chemical plants usually more instinct and dangerous. However, just because it’s so obvious that chemical plants can pollute the air, the Chinese government has to “take care of it”, and they did. Until 2014, more than 1/3 chemical plants, including all the large chemical plants was closed or accepted Industrial Upgrading and Transformation. The total amount of chemical plants has massively reduced, so has the pollution they make. Right now, the fact is that the main pollution in China, especially east, south and north, is Particle Matter. (Particle matters (PM), smog-forming pollutants (like NOx,hydrocarbons ) and toxics are the air pollution that can make damage on our health in a very short time, not only the CO2. ) One large project can make a huge amount of these pollution by both its construction process and the construction equipments. Let’s talk about the equipments. there are about 19 types of construction equipments usually used in large projects and the five highest-polluting types are responsible for about 65 percent of PM and 60 percent of NOx in California in 2005. And that’s way better than the condition of air in China. The total number of the “top five” construction equipments in each large project is approximately about 24 ( way smaller than the number in reality), and for a secondary city like Linyi, there usually have at least 40 large-scale construction project working at a same time period and usually they will last for years.
24 × 40 × 365 = 350400，That’s the number of the “top five” working in a small secondary city of China in one day. If we pick up some large, strong secondary city’s data, it will be much more horrible. Take the example of Nanjing, until the last month of 2014, Nanjing has near 2000 c=large scale constructions projects. Assuming construction equipments in each large project is still approximately about 24.
We have 24 ×2000 × 365 = 1.752 × 10^7
I should mentioned there are total 19 types of construction equipments and we should know that the air pollution in China that made by secondary city is lighter than that made by big cities like Shanghai. My suggestions on dealing with this problem has been posted in the Part I ( my last post before this one).
I’ll leave this datas and resources here, you can read the forms, estimate and imagine the damage brought by large projects.
The Health Risks of Construction Pollution in California by Don Anair
CONSTRUCTION-GENERATED CRITERIA AIR POLLUTANT AND PRECURSOR EMISSIONS
http://www.airquality.org/ceqa/cequguideupdate/Ch3Construction-GeneratedCAPsFINAL.pdf
中心城区40余个项目停工整改
http://news.gmw.cn/newspaper/2014-11/01/content_101771660.htm
南京近2000家工地全面停工
http://jsnews.jschina.com.cn/system/2014/12/06/022840665.shtml
南京600家工地昨起停工
http://www.yangtse.com/nanjing/2014-12-02/374931.html
南京明年内关闭 136家化工厂
An interesting post, Wei. Development, a hallmark of a growing economy, is generally a resource-intensive process that generates a lot of pollution.
You post left me with a few questions:
1. How do you know that large-scale production causes more pollution than chemical plants? I don’t believe this is mentioned in your references.
2. You use the 24 construction vehicles and 40 construction sites per secondary city. Where did you get these numbers? They do not appear in your reference.
3. What is the take away from your calculations? Should humans stop development? Are there alternatives to the current status quo and, if so, can you mathematically show why those are better options?
I found this post very informative as I hadn’t really thought about the impact of large scale construction projects on pollution and such. Obviously, construction is a necessity, but what can we do to cause it to be less of a danger and hassle? Some projects (like the Hub for example) seem to take forever to get completed, prolonging the constant pollution into the air. If we could get more efficient with finishing projects, this might help. I’m not really sure what we could do in terms of reducing pollution in places like Beijing, but the vegetation (as stated in a reply earlier) that was used during the Olympics seems like a good place to start. I don’t think they continued trying to reduce pollution after the Olympics which is a big part of the problem.
It is very true that China has faced a lot of air pollution issue these days. Lots of major cities are suffering serious air pollution. And I agree the mainly reason for that is over construction, rapid industrialization. Urban construction need trucks to transport materials from far distance, while because the diesel they burning causes more harmful erosion. In this case, the most serious source is no longer CO2 but dust. Air pollution often has long-term health impacts that build-up slowly over time. Air pollution has been linked to increased incidences of cancer, and heart disease. Scientists say the pollution in northern cities is so severe that 500 million people’s lives will be shortened by an average of 5.5 years. (http://theweek.com/articles/456979/chinas-massive-pollution-problem)
So we encourage “green construction,” using materials from local can reduce the distance of transformation. Using recyclable materials can reduce construction waste… That’s why LEED building is more suitable and environmentally friendly.
I think your post is very crucial relating the situations in developing countries. For developing countries, it’s essentials for more and more constructions to happen so that the country could be more economically pushed and prosperity would increase. However, the country would always ignore the side effects the constructions would bring back to the country at the same time. Take Beijing as an example, the air pollution is actually causing dangers to people’s health condition. The transportation are restricted for going to highways on certain days to decrease the flow, but there is always a jam everywhere. The air is extremely polluted with actual particles floating in the air. During Olympics, the government tried to planted a lot of vegetation to make the air be better temperately. However it is still getting worse, and the government seemed less concerned about the situation.