14 DAY TRIAL // People living in the city of Shanghai, China will soon get the shock of a lifetime. Long story short, they will finally get the chance to experience what getting oxygen from clean air and not from heavily polluted one feels like.
This is because the city’s high officials have decided that the best way to reduce the amounts of smog floating about over this urban area is to ban the use of coal for energy or heating.
According to Mongabay, a new Clean Air Action Plan rolled out by high officials in this part of China says that, in just four years’ time, burning coal is bound to become an illegal practice everywhere in Shanghai.
By the time this happens, the hundreds of coal boilers and industrial furnaces now up and running in the city are expected to either shut down one at a time, or maybe switch to operating on more environmentally friendly energy sources.
Speaking to members of the press, Wu Qizhou, deputy director with the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau wished to stress that, “The frequency of heavy pollution will be significantly reduced by 2017.”
“The air quality will better meet residents' expectations as well as the general qualifications of building an international metropolis,” he went on to say.
Detailed information about which eco-friendly energy sources will take the place of coal has not yet been shared with the public. However, odds are that more news on the topic will soon follow.
Interestingly enough, the news of Shanghai's decision to ban coal burning comes shortly after WHO (the World Health Organization) released a report officially stating that air pollution caused by this dirty energy source and others like it was a leading cause of cancer.
“After thoroughly reviewing the latest available scientific literature, the world's leading experts convened by the IARC [International Agency for Research on Cancer] Monographs Programme concluded that there is sufficient evidence that exposure to outdoor air pollution causes lung cancer.”
“They also noted a positive association with an increased risk of blabbed cancer,” WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer explained in a press release issued on October 18.