China traffic, home cooking causes 80% of air pollution in East Asia: Study

A recent study has revealed that China's city traffic and home cooking is to be blamed for 80 percent soot found in East Asia's atmosphere.

A study appearing in the ACS' journal Environmental Science and Technology has reportedly resolved long-standing questions about sources of air pollution responsible for Asia's infamous atmospheric brown clouds.

Orjan Gustafsson and colleagues from China, South Korea and the United States have pointed out in their study that nobody is certain about the exact sources of black carbon air pollution from the People's Republic of China.

People can inhale these tiny particles deep into the lungs and implicate soot with 500,000 premature deaths annually in China alone, study estimated.

Black carbon in the atmosphere also absorbs sunlight, and scientists think it is second only to carbon dioxide as a factor in global warming.

The researchers used a powerful carbon-14 identification method to trace four-fifths of the black carbon emitted in China to incomplete combustion of fossil fuel such as coal briquettes used in home cook stoves and automobile and truck exhaust.