An import from Asia: Bad air

[WhiteTara]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002943714_asianair21m.html
Another reminder that this is all one world.

On the day a Boeing 747 delivered Chinese President Hu Jintao to Everett this week, a tiny twin-propeller airplane loaded with electronic instruments lifted off from the same airport, looking for another delivery from China: dirty air.

Toxic mercury from Asian power plants. Ozone produced by growing fleets of Chinese cars. Smoke from burning Siberian forests. It all rides the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean and lands in places as remote as the Olympic mountains, scientists are discovering.

Most pollution here is still from local sources, and much of the Asian pollution is thought to reach the Northwest only in the spring because of seasonal weather patterns. But some local problems — mercury in fish in local lakes, for example, or the haze that rings Mount Rainier — could have Asian connections.
snip
For its part, China has been sensitive to claims that its pollution is spreading overseas. Earlier this month, the government-run Xinhua News Agency reported that a Chinese environmental official called the idea that mercury from Chinese factories was reaching the U.S. "entirely groundless."

And Denis Hayes, a leading environmentalist from Washington who has traveled and spoken in China about environmental problems, cautioned that while it's easy to point a finger across the Pacific, some of the Asian pollution is created by factories making products for U.S. markets.

[dysfunctional press]

1. karmha sucks...

and i'm sure that europe really feels so sorry for us.

[NYC]

2. That's one of the ways we "save" money.

...some of the Asian pollution is created by factories making products for U.S. markets...

There's no cost of pollution control/prevention in the price of the cheap Chinese goods we buy. The taxpayers pay for the clean up separately. (That's true for much of the corporate pollution in the U.S. as well. The corporations save money while polluting, then the taxpayers pay separately for the clean up.)