Scientist Says Pollution From China Is Killing a Japanese Island’s Trees
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Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times
Osamu Nagafuchi, second right,
an environmental engineer, checks a monitoring station around Yakushima
to measure levels in the air of ozone and sulfur emissions, which are
typically the byproducts of burned coal or automobile exhaust.
YAKUSHIMA, Japan — A mysterious pestilence has befallen this island’s
primeval forests, leaving behind the bleached, skeletal remains of dead
trees that now dot the dark green mountainsides. Osamu Nagafuchi, an
environmental engineer with a passion for the island and its rugged
terrain, believes he knows the culprit: airborne pollutants from
smog-belching
China, hundreds of miles upwind.
For years, Mr. Nagafuchi’s theory was ignored by fellow scientists and
even mocked by bureaucrats in the national government who administer the
forests on this southwestern island. But Japan has begun taking his
warnings more seriously, as the nation has been gripped by a national
health scare over rising levels of potentially dangerous airborne
particles that have swept into other parts of Japan and that many now
believe were produced by China, its huge and rapidly industrializing
neighbor.
These fears have reached a new level recently as China itself has issued
more public warnings about the growing health risks from its cities’
gray, soupy air. While Mr. Nagafuchi and a small number of collaborators
say their research is not politically motivated, they admit that they
may be finding more receptivity among a public that already resents
China for supplanting Japan as Asia’s largest economy, and for what is
seen as its haughty attitude in a territorial dispute over islands both
countries claim.
