One Man's Blog

Get Rich. Save the Environment. Save the World.

Last Tuesday I was in Chicago, and all was going well until a seemingly unlikely event started a chain reaction that would lay me up in bed for nearly three days… It rained.

Yep. It didn’t rain very hard, or very long, but it just so happened that I was walking about a mile or so through the city back to my hotel during the light rain. I could have caught a cab, but instead I ducked into a Walgreen’s and got a baseball hat and kept walking.

I know what you’re thinking. But no, I didn’t catch a cold!

I was taking my time, even stopping to snap photos of skyscrapers in the rain, when about halfway back to the hotel I started having difficulty catching my breath. Now I don’t have asthma, and I can generally out walk anyone I know, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I was having an allergic reaction to something.
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Pollution Kills 750,000 Chinese Each Year

Sixteen of the worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to World Bank research. Yet a report sponsored by the Chinese Government which uncovered potentially scary information was edited to “prevent social unrest”.

Missing from this report are the research projectÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.

Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was Ã¢â‚¬Å“reluctantlyÃ¢â‚¬Â excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.

Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment. The World Bank said that the findings of the report were still being discussed with the government.

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