bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Agence France-Presse

Researchers in China have found a significant link between poor air quality and unhappiness by combing through millions of social media posts from residents of 144 Chinese cities.
The study set out to gauge how urban air pollution affected day-to-day mood by matching chatter on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service, and fine-particle pollution levels.
Lead author of the study Siqi Zheng, associate professor at MIT and director of the University’s China Future City Lab, said the takeaway was simple.
“Higher levels of air pollution lower people’s happiness in the world’s most populous country,” Zheng said.
China vows ‘no leeway’ for officials who miss air quality targets in pollution fight
Zheng and her colleagues used machine-learning algorithms to comb through more than 200 million messages posted in 2014 on Weibo which, as of mid-2018, had 455 million active users.
They devised an “expressed happiness index” based on key words and context, and then stacked it up against fluctuating levels of fine particulate (called PM2.5) pollution.
“We found a significant negative correlation” – when one went up, the other went down – “between pollution and happiness levels,” Zheng said.
“Women were more sensitive to higher pollution levels than men.”

Intriguingly, the link was strongest in the very cleanest and dirtiest cities examined.
People very worried about health and air quality tend to move to cleaner cities, the study suggested, while those in the dirtiest urban areas were more aware of damage to their health.
“Our index has the potential to become a tool for government to understand common citizens’ daily concerns,” Zheng said.
The Chinese government, in fact, has long monitored posts and conversations on social networks to track public opinion.
More than half of China’s population – nearly 700 million people – now live in urban areas.
Will China’s changing energy and environmental policies save the planet?
Dirty air is not the only blight on life in urban China, which is also plagued by soaring housing prices, worries over food safety, and poor public services.
But health-affecting pollution – especially microscopic bits from coal-fired power plants and factories that settle in the lungs – is a long-standing gripe of the country’s burgeoning middle class.
More than a million premature deaths every year in China can be chalked up to air pollution, the World Health Organisation and other research groups have concluded.
A toxic cocktail of small and larger particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and ozone (O3) is likewise linked to poor cognitive performance, labour productivity and educational outcomes.
On polluted days, people are also more likely to engage in impulsive and risky behaviour they may later regret, observational studies have shown.


Awareness of the problem and its consequences is very high among China’s city dwellers, a fact not lost on the government.
After an embarrassing episode in 2012 when daily pollution levels published on Twitter by the US embassy in Beijing were consistently higher than official figures for the city, China’s leaders declared war on smog-clogged air.
They set up hundreds of monitoring stations throughout the country, and introduced more stringent standards, especially for small particles less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) in diameter.
The average human hair is 60-to-90 microns in width.
Air pollution in Beijing, Hebei down 12pc in 2018
According to the new rules, the density of these dangerous microscopic particles should not exceed 35 microgrammes per cubic metre (35mcg/m3) for any 24-hour period.
WHO air quality guidelines are even stricter, setting the limit at 25mcg/m3.
In China’s most heavily polluted cities – including Beijing and Tianjin, home to more than 35 million people – particle densities are often two, three and even four times higher than either standard.
Since 2013, PM2.5 particle pollution has dropped on average about 40 per cent, according to one recent study, but ground-level ozone pollution continues to climb.
Average daily PM2.5 concentration was 55mcg/m3 across all 144 cities – more than double the WHO limit – and several times higher in many.


China’s old industrial cities race to reinvent themselves in rapidly changing economy

China surpasses 10,000km of subsea pipelines, boosting offshore energy network

Hong Kong AI start-up develops emission monitoring system, with mainland as target market

New climate study revisits link between air pollution in East Asia and global warming

China pollution

Dirty air in Chinese cities linked to unhappiness, study finds

Pollution levels in major Chinese cities, like Beijing, have been shown to have a significant impact on people’s happiness in a new study. Photo: Simon Song

News

China

Politics

People & Culture

Millions of keywords in social media posts tracked and matched to air pollution levels
Researchers find high levels of pollution lower people’s happiness


Millions of keywords in social media posts tracked and matched to air pollution levels show high levels of pollution lower people’s happiness


Dirty air in Chinese cities linked to unhappiness, study finds

Millions of keywords in social media posts tracked and matched to air pollution levels Researchers find high levels of pollution lower people’s happiness

China vows ‘no leeway’ for officials who miss air quality targets in pollution fight

Millions of keywords in social media posts tracked and matched to air pollution levels

Researchers find high levels of pollution lower people’s happiness