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To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.
–YODA, Dark Rendezvous
China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants
As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.
Beijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China
“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”
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