Foul Stench (and Giant Jellyfish)

By TETSU KOBAYASHI - From asahi.com

From mountaintops to the seabed, the effects of China's headlong rush into modernity via smoke-belching factories are being felt across Japan.

On cold winter mornings, when biting winds blow off the Asian land mass and over the Sea of Japan, trees atop Mount Unzen-Fugendake in Nagasaki Prefecture are covered in a fine icy coating.

Residents of the normally warm southern prefecture traditionally refer to the seasonal white frost as hana-boro, or flowery little clusters of ice that dot the tree branches.

But, something is happening to the enchanting ice blossoms.

Hiromitsu Watanabe, 63, Unzen resident and a former high school teacher, has been studying the icy fog deposits since 1999.

"Look how dirty it is. It's almost like slush. This is evidence of transboundary air pollution," he said. Watanabe was displaying a small bottle containing black water. The water was melted ice fog deposit from Mount Unzen-Fugendake. The sample was taken Dec. 9.

The water's pH index was 3.2, making the liquid almost on par with vinegar. According to Watanabe, vehicle exhaust and the burning of coal are causing the change.

Mount Unzen-Fugendake's highest summit is 1,359 meters, which means it is exposed to vast wind currents.

According to research by the Nagasaki Prefectural Institute for Environmental Research and Public Health, whatever is turning hana-boro into slush is originating in China. More precisely, it's coming from the vicinity of Beijing, 1,500 kilometers northwest of the mountain.

The cold weather that produces hana-boro tends to occur when a typical winter atmospheric pressure pattern sets in, with northwestern seasonal winds blowing...

About 20 km west of central Beijing, a forest of chimney stacks spew white smoke into an already smoggy sky. The Shoudu Iron and Steel Works plant produces about 8 million tons of steel annually. It is the largest steel production center in Beijing.

"The smoke used to be reddish. Now it is pure white," Wu Jianxin, a Shoudu official, proudly proclaimed.

The Shoudu plant has been making capital equipment investments since the 1990s, installing desulphurization devices and other means to try and protect the environment.

Still, there is no getting around the fact that the plant remains a major pollution source that guzzles coal in huge volumes...

Underwater effects

Hiroshi Koshikawa, senior researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, said that when he was aboard a Fisheries Agency's research vessel in June 2007, he noticed the water had turned a dark tea color.

"We were far offshore but the sea had a fishy smell," Koshikawa said.

The boat was in the East China Sea, about 350 km from Shanghai.

Koshikawa expressed surprise to find the effects of the polluted Yangtze river, also known as the Chang Jiang, so far out.

At that time, Koshikawa also spotted a school of Echizen jellyfish, each measuring more than 20 centimeters, moving northward.

A few months later, Japan was once more inundated with huge Echizen jellyfish, which measured more than 1-meter across. The tentacled giants were first spotted in Japan's offshore waters in 2002.

Every winter, the high season for many fishing operations, the jellyfish cause extensive damage to nets and to hauls themselves.

The prevalent theory for the arrival of Echizen jellyfish along the Sea of Japan coastline is that Chinese waters, polluted by untreated effluent discharged by China's cities, are promoting the growth of microorganisms.

Overfishing, in turn, causes the number of fish that also feed on the microorganisms to plunge, thus providing a perfect environment for jellyfish to proliferate.

In November 2007, a three-nation scientific study council comprising researchers from Japan, China and South Korea met in Cheju, South Korea.

For the first time, a Chinese specialist revealed details of the jellyfish's emergence in China. Japanese researchers were shocked to hear that Echizen jellyfish have been showing up en masse in Jiangsu province, around the estuary of the Yangtze where it flows into the East China Sea, since 1997.

There was another surprise. Japanese scientists learned that hatchlings were also showing up in waters off Liaoning province in northeastern China.

Still, China does not want to admit that the troublesome jellyfish are indeed originating in its waters.

"There is no evidence that indicates any correlation between (the jellyfish) and China's economic growth. Maybe there are some that drift into the Sea of Japan, but they are limited in number," said Cheng Jiahua, of the East Sea Fisheries Research Institute...