[LurkingPenguin]

I never truly appreciated how valuable good air is until I moved to Asia and experienced weeks at a time living in air with AQIs over 100 and namely high PM2.5 levels.

The physical effects of spending even an hour outside are immediately apparent and scary when I contemplate what this would probably do to my health if I rack up years of exposure. It's even scarier to think about children who are exposed to this air from birth and grow up inhaling it every time they walk to school, go outside to play, etc.

[okal]

Same here. I live in Nairobi. The air quality here isn't all that good, but I acquired a newfound appreciation for it when I visited Gurgaon in India a few years ago. When I first landed, I actually mistook the dense smog for clouds. I came pretty close to passing out once while waiting for a taxi on the street. I was basically in air-conditioned rooms the entire time I was there, save for a short trip to Delhi, which felt noticeably better.

I've been equally surprised when visiting other cities with cleaner air than my own. It might be one of the things that pushes me to uproot my life here and try make a home someplace else.

[spaetzleesser]

I think sometime in the future people will look at the way we are accepting pollution these days in the same way we are looking back at how people openly worked with mercury in the past.

It’s kind of of insane that we know about the harm done by pollution but shrug it off because doing something would be too expensive.

[mensetmanusman]

People have statistically calculated the loss of years to be lived due to monthly exposure to such conditions.

This, combined with the currency controls that China implements are, for example, an interesting manifestation of how the Chinese people literally sacrifice their lives and purchasing power to improve their economy, become globally competitive, and make their ‘leaders’ wealthy. The average person there does not know that they are doing this, but the leadership has this option in a totalitarian government that other states do not.

[LurkingPenguin]

China's environmental track record stinks to high heaven (literally) and there's no doubt the country's leadership has been and is sacrificing public health for economic growth the same way the US did during industrialization. But the situation in Asia isn't as simple as China.

I live in Taiwan. While there's no doubt that some (and at times perhaps a lot) of the air pollution in Taiwan blows over from China, there are plenty of domestic sources of air pollution. Taichung has the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world, and the area between Taichung and Kaohsiung is home to many factories and industrial sources of pollution. Scooter usage is very high as well.

Taiwan is a democracy, getting closer to developed than developing, and a lot of younger people care about the environment. But without manufacturing and the pollution that comes with it, Taiwan doesn't have an economy.

Malaysia has a lot of air pollution. Some is industrial, but a lot comes from fires in Indonesia. A similar situation exists in Thailand. The northern part of the country, including Chiang Mai, has horrible seasonal pollution from agricultural fires in Myanmar and Laos. And of course many parts of India are infamous for pollution.

The bottom line is that Asia is the world's factory and home to many natural resources that have severe environmental consequences when exploited. Asian countries want to develop and the only realistic paths to economic growth are paved with pollution.

Living here has made it clear to me that for all of the talk about reshoring manufacturing in the US, it isn't going to happen, not just for economic reasons, but because there's no way Americans will be willing to sacrifice the clean(er) air and water they have today.

Pollution in Asia is a big problem but the West, because of its consumption that drives industrial activity in Asia, is reasonably as much a cause of the problem as the people in Asia are.

[spaetzleesser]

They are following the path of the West. We also sacrificed the health and lives of workers for a long time so capitalists could make more money. Any kind of consciousness and willingness to reduce pollution is a pretty new phenomenon. And we are still OK with people living in old buildings with lead paint and lead piping although we know how harmful that is.

[nomercy400]

Ever felt that stingy feeling when you were outside on a bad air day (aqi 200+), like when having a hoarse or raspy voice, as if you just breathed a whiff of glass powder?

That's how it can feel.

[spaetzleesser]

That happened to me when I visited Mumbai. After two days I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave. It’s hard to believe people live under these conditions their whole lives.

[5e92cb50239222b]

It's a pretty common occurrence around here to lose your voice completely for a couple of days after spending an hour or two outside in winter smog. Still, almost nobody cares about air quality. I spent many years in this society and still don't understand such behavior.

[mensetmanusman]

Situations like these are where wearing outdoor N95 masks should be normalized for peoples health.