‘ China cuts smog but health damage already done’

Shanghai: While China has made progresscutting smog, the damage to the health of millions of people mayalready have been done, especially as the population ages, the head of aU. S.based research agency said. China faces about 1.6 million premature deaths a year as aresult of air pollution, the U.S .- based Health Effects Institute( HEI) said in a report, based on data going back to 1990, published on Tuesday. China cut concentrations of hazardous particles known asPM2.5 by 6.5 percent in 338 cities last year. Smogprone northern regions also met 2013- 2017 air quality targets after awinter campaign to cut industrial output, coal consumption andtraffic. Nevertheless, deaths could still rise as China ages andoverall air quality remains below the country’s own standards, the study showed. “People are living longer and older people are moresusceptible to the diseases most closely linked to air pollution- the major causes of death in China like stroke, heart attack, and lung cancer,” HEI president Dan Greenbaum told Reuters in an interview. “We have done some projections in China up to 2030, and evenwith improvements in air quality, you see the number of deathsgoing up as the population gets older,” he added. The number of Chinese people over 60 reached 240 million at the end 2017, accounting for 17.3 percent of the population andup 55 million since 2011, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The China Association of Social Security, a governmentregistered research group, expects the number toreach 400 million by 2035. As the government prepares a smog action plan, the next round of measures could prove harder to implement, Greenbaum said.