Monitor | Better pollution policies would mean longer lives for millions
With a little political will, Beijing could easily hit its targets for mainland urban average PM2.5 levels by 2030, 20 years ahead of schedule
In the early 1990s, China's former premier, Zhu Rongji, quipped that the move from Shanghai to work in Beijing would take five years off his life.
He was more right than he knew. According to an academic study published this week, air pollution from burning coal has shortened average life expectancies in northern China by five and a half years.
The study blamed government policies that handed out free coal for winter heating in the northern provinces. Those policies have now been scrapped, but as the chart below shows, China's coal consumption has more than tripled since the time Zhu moved from Shanghai to Beijing.
As a result, the mainland's air pollution has got much, much worse, with Beijing and other northern cities frequently blanketed in hazardous concentrations of toxic smog.
Gauging just how bad things are is tricky. The best way is to measure atmospheric concentrations of fine particles less than 2.5 micrometres across. Known as PM2.5, these nasty little smuts penetrate deep into the lungs, causing everything from childhood asthma and bronchitis to heart disease and cancer.