Coal Emissions in China Slash 5.5 Years off Life Expectancy, Study Says

The life expectancy of people living in northern China is 5 ½ years less than in southern China as a result of the north’s notoriously bad air pollution, largely due to the burning of coal, according to a new study. In an analysis
Air Pollution in China
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of air quality recordings from 90 Chinese cities from 1981 to 2000 and mortality data from the 1990s, a team of researchers estimated that high air pollution will cost the roughly 500 million people living north of the Huai River a combined 2.5 billion years of life expectancy compared with people living in the south. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers say increased mortality, attributable to cardiorespiratory illness, is the unintended consequence of a Chinese policy that from 1950 to 1980 provided free coal for boilers in cities north of the Huai, but not for those living in the south.