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Acid rain causes agricultural damage in China
Our Tian Zhen Bureau
31 DEC In Southwestern China, in Guizhou and Sichuan provinces acid rain fell on some two thirds of the agricultural lands, with 16 percent of the crop area sustaining high levels of damage. A high level team of experts were rushed to the area to assess the damage and reduce further damages.
Acid rain is now emerging as a major problem in the developing world, especially in parts of Asia and the Pacific region where energy use has surged and the use of sulfur-containing coal and oil -- the primary sources of acid emissions -- is very high. Large regions of southern and eastern China, northern and central Thailand, and much of the Korean peninsula have experienced damaging sulfur deposition levels. In some industrialized areas of China, for example, acid deposition levels are close to exceeding those experienced in Central Europe's "Black Triangle," a large swath of Poland, the Czech Republic, and southeast Germany where both acid rain levels and forest damage were acute in the 1980s.
A spokesman from GreenPeace said "By 2020, Asian SO2 emissions could reach 110 million metric tons if no action is taken beyond current levels of control." The Chinese agriculture minister has said that " All measures were being taken to assess the damage and control such disasters in the future". He further stressed that there would be a drive to implement modern pollution control techniques like flue-gas scrubbers & low sulphur fuel.
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