Fine dust from China kills 30,000 a year

Anti-dust products gain huge popularity

By Park Jae-hyuk

Korean consumers’ concern about fine dust, which is believed to come from China, seems to be legitimate as confirmed by a report published Thursday in the peer-reviewed international journal Nature.

About 30,900 people in Korea and Japan die prematurely every year due to fine dust from China, according to the study jointly conducted by researchers in China’s Tsinghua and Peking universities, the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Irvine.

Analyzing the number of early deaths from heart, lung and blood vessel-related diseases and the density and movement of fine dust, the researchers found out that 411,100 people worldwide died prematurely due to fine dust from outside their countries.

The researchers especially pointed out that China, as the largest producer of fine dust particles, causes the greatest number of deaths because of the high population density of itself and its neighbors.

“It costs less to manufacture goods in places like China and Southeast Asia, mostly because those places have cheaper labor than the West,” Steven Davis, co-author of the paper, said. “But they also tend to have less stringent environmental protections.”

So consumers appear to have no choice but to buy anti-dust products to protect respiratory organs from the deadly air pollution.

Apart from air purifiers, masks, cleaning products and air cleaning plants, samgyeopsal and seaweed have also been in the limelight in spring, because they are regarded as foods which expel fine dust from a person’s body.

According to e-commerce platform 11st, sales of samgyeopsal rose 33 percent this month year-on-year. The nation’s leading discount chains ― E-mart and Lotte Mart ― have also held promotional events for pork in line with its rising popularity.

But experts said there is not a lot of science behind this belief, pointing out samgyeopsal’s fat may disrupt blood circulation and detoxification of the dust. They also said roasting samgyeopsal can worsen indoor air quality.

Consumption of seaweed and herbs has surged as well. Online marketplace Auction said sales of water parsley doubled from a year earlier. Those of seaweed, broccoli, green tea and pear also grew rapidly.

While some experts say these foods can prevent heavy metals from being absorbed into the body, others point out those foods in the intestines cannot excrete the dust causing severe problems in respiratory organs.

The most efficient product recognized by most experts is a mask, still the most popular item on the market which is unusual in spring.

According to Auction, sales of masks last week skyrocketed 406 percent year-on-year. Social commerce firm Ticket Monster also posted a 103 percent increase in mask sales last month from a year earlier.

“The worsening fine dust issue affects sales of the related products,” an Auction official said. “Consumers have begun to regard masks as necessities, because of heavy air pollution throughout the year.”

People, who can afford to buy higher-priced anti-dust products, have begun to pay attention to air purifiers and clothes dryers, as more households live inside with the windows closed.

E-mart announced sales of air purifiers last week rose 86.1 percent year-on-year. Electronics retailer Lotte Hi-mart said the sales of dryers soared eleven-fold this month year-on-year.

According to the pollution-monitoring website AirVisual, Seoul ranked second worst among large cities worldwide in terms of air pollution last week after New Delhi, India. A U.S.-based nonprofit research institute also said the annual average density of fine dust in Korea was the second-worst among OECD members after Turkey.

The Korean government’s data has recently shown that more than 80 percent of fine dust here comes from China.