and Chinese governments are rivals when it comes to many military and security issues, which inhibits flyovers. So this is a way to sample China and sample Korea, and the Koreans are very interested in working with us,” said Barry Lefer, a NASA scientist and program manager who took part in the study. This summer, NASA scientists returned to Seoul to begin sharing preliminary results. Last year, NASA flew planes at various altitudes above the peninsula, chasing dust for a month. So its government teamed up with NASA last year for the most ambitious sampling and study of Korean air quality to date. Shanghai reached those levels 201 times, according to data collected by the State Department at its embassies and consulates in those cities.Īlthough China is an easy target for blame, as its industrial dust does drift across borders, South Korea wanted to know more about its own pollution causes. Environmental Protection Agency.īeijing, by contrast, experienced average air quality index levels that were unhealthy for sensitive populations, or even more hazardous, during 231 days last year. In 2016, Seoul’s air quality index was considered unhealthy for sensitive populations (such as children, the elderly and those with existing respiratory conditions) on 78 days.īy comparison, the Los Angeles metro area, which had some of the United States’ highest average PM 2.5 readings in 2016, experienced only two such days, according to an NPR analysis of data released by the Seoul city government and the U.S. Seoul’s pollution levels on some days rival those of Shanghai and Beijing, major Chinese cities whose pollution problems are well-documented. South Korea’s air is more than twice as polluted as the other nations’ average. A ranking released in February shows South Korea had the second worst air quality of all advanced nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with only Turkey faring worse. High concentrations in the air of PM 2.5 - fine particulate matter that can get deep in your lungs - are a relatively common occurrence in Seoul. “I usually say stay home if they hear it is high,” Kim says. Kim Sang-heon, who practices internal medicine at Hanyang University Medical Center, says since there’s a clear link between pollution and respiratory illnesses, he preaches smog avoidance to his patients. The health effects can be seen in hospitals, with patients complaining of wheezing and coughing that won’t go away.ĭr. On many days of the year, a thick industrial haze blankets the capital city of Seoul, where some 25 million people live in the metropolitan area. It’s common to hear that neighboring China is to blame, but a joint study by NASA and the Korean government has found there’s a lot South Korea can do on its own to cut the smog. This mission is scheduled to launch in May 2018 and the space agency had initiated the process of inviting people to send their names to Mars in October 2017.South Korea faces a chronic dirty air problem that makes it one of the most polluted countries in the world. In 2017, over 1.6 million people signed up with NASA to get their names marked on a silicon microchip that will be carried out Insight mission, and sent to Mars. NASA is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Currently, the agency is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is responsible for most of the US space exploration efforts, including the Apollo moon-landing mission, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. The Nasa is responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research in the United States. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, commonly referred as NASA or Nasa, is an independent agency of the United States federal government.
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