Particulate pollution quadrupled across a quarter of the U.S. last weekend because of a dust storm from Mongolia that picked up industrial pollution in China. Some scientists have claimed for years that pollution can spread from China to the U.S., causing air quality to plummet. Russ Schnell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that as the Chinese economy grows and people there buy more cars and use more electricity, the resulting pollution “will come to skewer or overwhelm our own pollution.” Within a decade, he said, some pollution levels in California won’t be controllable by the state because of contributions from China.
