Tackling Air Pollution in China—What do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON

doi:10.3390/su6085322

Open AccessThis article is

freely available
re-usable

Sustainability 2014, 6(8), 5322-5338; doi:10.3390/su6085322

Article

Tackling Air Pollution in China—What do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON

Dongyong Zhang^1,2

, Junjuan Liu¹

and Bingjun Li^1,*

+ Authors' affiliations

Received: 10 June 2014 / Revised: 21 July 2014 / Accepted: 29 July 2014 / Published: 18 August 2014

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environment in Sustainable Development)

View Full-Text | Download PDF [826 KB, uploaded 18 August 2014] | Browse Figures

Abstract: Since the prolonged, severe smog that blanketed many Chinese cities in first months of 2013, living in smog has become “normal” to most people living in mainland China. This has not only caused serious harm to public health, but also resulted in massive economic losses in many other ways. Tackling the current air pollution has become crucial to China’s long-term economic and social sustainable development. This paper aims to find the causes of the current severe air quality and explore the possible solutions by reviewing the current literature, and by comparing China’s air pollution regulations to that of the post London Killer Smog of 1952, in the United Kingdom (UK). It is hoped that China will learn the lesson from the UK, and decouple its economic growth from the detrimental impact of environment. Policy suggestions are made.

Keywords: China; smog; air pollution; lesson; London

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Export to BibTeX | EndNote

MDPI and ACS Style

Zhang, D.; Liu, J.; Li, B. Tackling Air Pollution in China—What do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON. Sustainability 2014, 6, 5322-5338.

AMA Style

Zhang D, Liu J, Li B. Tackling Air Pollution in China—What do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON. Sustainability. 2014; 6(8):5322-5338.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Zhang, Dongyong; Liu, Junjuan; Li, Bingjun. 2014. "Tackling Air Pollution in China—What do We Learn from the Great Smog of 1950s in LONDON." Sustainability 6, no. 8: 5322-5338.

Sustainability EISSN 2071-1050 Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland RSS E-Mail Table of Contents Alert