Someone's to Blame

Yesterday I wrote about the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saying over 2.2 million Chinese youths die from respiratory diseases and such due to indoor air pollution.

However, the CDC released an announcement soon after the media wrote about it, saying that a false report was released about this in a press conference that was not presented by the CDC, and the center has not released any kind of data about indoor pollution.

So where did this "report" come from, that was originally reported by the China News Service?

It turns out the number was released by an air filter manufacturer, according to He Jiukun, an official from the environment department of the CDC.

Song Guangsheng, director of the National Indoor Environment Test Center, also dismissed the number.

"Statistics from the World Health Organization show that the annual deaths from indoor air pollution is about 2.6 million globally," he said.

"No institutes in China have done such research yet. Even the 110,000 death figure we commonly acknowledge was a result based on research by the WHO."

So China hasn't even conducted research on possible deaths from indoor air pollution... maybe because it doesn't even know that this problem could exist or that it doesn't want to measure it for fear of the repercussions it could have on the real estate/furniture sector?

In the meantime it's a relief to know the numbers aren't 2.2 million... for now...