Airborne pollution is a major issue in China, with local hospitals opening up "smog clinics" and waves of city-dwellers migrating to more rural areas to escape. While Chinese officials are pursuing "cloud seeding" as a way to control pollution, a Zhejiang University professor thinks he has a better idea: Sprinklers. Big ones. 
 
 Yu Shaocai is a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee and an expert on "wet deposition," a process by which falling raindrops or snowflakes "scavenge" aerosol particles from the air. In other words, they collect and deposit the polluted particles on the ground. This why the air is usually clearer after a rainy day. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 In an article published in the January issue of Environmental Chemistry Letters, Shaocai proposes a novel way to kickstart wet deposition in polluted cities: By faking it with geoengineered urban infrastructure. In simpler terms, Shaocai's plan involves attaching giant sprinklers, like showerheads, to the exterior of skyscrapers, and spraying water into the atmosphere above heavily-polluted cities to clear out toxins and gases. 
 
 Beijing on January 16. Image: ChinaFotoPress. 
 
 As you might expect, Shaocai has his detractors. Speaking to The South China Morning Post, one scientist questions where the water would come from and how it would be recycled, but then grudgingly admits that "assuming his team can find a system that works, and they've done enough economic analysis and considered the handling of water resources, this could be a viable option." 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Shaocai imagines attaching sprinklers to the CCTV building in Beijing. Image: Lintao Zhang/Getty. 
 
 Then, of course, there's the cost of retrofitting skyscrapers with watering devices, not to mention designing a system that's safe during storms and high winds. Or engineering a system smart enough to not overwater, or freeze up on cold days. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 In short, this a theoretical paper in a chemistry journal—not a workable plan. Yet. 
 
 Shaocai told the SCMP that he and his students plan to carry out tests at Zhejiang University, first, and then in Hangzhou. In his paper, he imagines the architectural implications of attaching sprinkler systems to Beijing's CCTV building or Shanghai Dongfang Tower, including some faintly absurd Photoshop composites: 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Shaocai's plan sounds (and looks) like the stuff of turn-of-the-century science fiction. But it's actually fairly logical. Most urban pollution drifts below 300 feet, which means existing towers offer the perfect platform for wet deposition. And, of course, skyscrapers are usually located in parts of cities where humans spend the most time commuting—so it makes sense that man-made "rainouts" would need to mirror them on the map. 
 
 A rocket launcher used to seed clouds to induce rain is seen at a station of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau in Beijing. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 In December, the China Meteorological Administration announced a $277 billion plan to begin large-scale cloud seeding around Chinese cities, clearing pollution by "firing rockets carrying a payload of silver iodide particles into the clouds." But there are questions about whether cloud-seeding will actually work to spur wet deposition, since existing snow and rainfall should already be doing that job. 
 
 Whether or not Shaocai ever makes it off the drawing board, it's really cool to see how architecture—even the sort most associated with vanity and excess, the skyscraper—could serve secondary and tertiary urban functions in the near future. When humans first began building tall buildings, we imagined all kinds of future purposed for them: The Empire State Building was supposed to have its own Zeppelin tethering dock; other skyscrapers were supposed to support whole airplane runways. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 None of those futures ever came to pass—but it's amazing to see other, totally unexpected ones emerge. [Environmental Chemistry Letters; South China Morning Post] ||||| China’s export industry is responsible for dirty emissions that are blowing across the Pacific Ocean and contributing to smog in the United States, a new scientific study says. 
 
 About one-fifth of the pollution China spews into the atmosphere comes from producing goods for export to the United States and other countries, according to the paper by a group of scientists that was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Winds blow pollutants from Chinese power plants and factories across the Pacific in about six days, where they boost levels of smog in the United States. 
 
 Los Angeles and parts of the eastern U.S. experienced at least one extra day of smog that exceeded federal health standards for ozone in 2006 as a result of emissions from export manufacturing in China, the study found. 
 
 “Rising emissions produced in China are a key reason global emissions of air pollutants have remained at a high level during 2000–2009 even as emissions produced in the United States, Europe, and Japan have decreased,” the scientists wrote. “Outsourcing production to China does not always relieve consumers in the United States — or, for that matter, many countries in the Northern Hemisphere — from the environmental impacts of air pollution." 
 
 Nine scientists in the United States, China and the United Kingdom used data from 2006 to quantify how much of the air pollution reaching the U.S. West Coast from China is from the production goods for export to the United States and other countries. Scientists followed the path of air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides carbon monoxide and black carbon, through the atmosphere to gauge their effects on air quality in the United States. 
 
 While the United States has reaped some of the benefits of outsourcing -- cheaper cellphones, televisions and appliances and big declines in air pollution -- rising emissions in China have paralyzed cities there with severe smog. 
 
 The paper is a reminder that U.S. demand for cheap imports from China has a way of blowing those environmental problems back at us, said Steve Davis, an Earth system scientist at UC Irvine and co-author of the study. 
 
 “It’s sort of a boomerang effect,” he said. 
 
 Davis expressed hope that the findings would be used by world governments working to craft international agreements to limit emissions of carbon dioxide that are driving climate change as well as short-lived air pollutants that are responsible for poor air quality around the globe. 
 
 “We need to move beyond placing blame for who’s creating these emissions and realize that we all have a common interest in reducing the pollution,” Davis said. 
 
 Since the 1990s, scientists have known that pollution from China is carried across the Pacific by westerly winds and that it worsens air quality along the U.S. West Coast. Those emissions contribute only slightly to U.S. smog levels, which are overwhelmingly caused by local emissions from vehicles, factories and power plants. 
 
 “We shouldn’t take an alarmist perspective,” Davis said. “Los Angeles air quality is not going to be what it was in the 70s or 80s because of this.” 
 
 tony.barboza@latimes.com 
 
 Twitter: @tonybarboza
– Outsourcing dirty emissions-producing industries to China hasn't improved America's air as much as some might think, a new study finds. Researchers say some of the rising emissions from the manufacturing of China's exports—many of which go to America—are making their way across the Pacific, sometimes pushing smog standards above federal health levels in Los Angeles and even in parts of the eastern US, reports the LA Times. The study shows that American demand for cheap exports can still cause environmental problems at home, one of its authors says. "It’s sort of a boomerang effect," he says. "We need to move beyond placing blame for who’s creating these emissions and realize that we all have a common interest in reducing the pollution." In China, meanwhile, the smog problem has become so dire that a scientist has come up with a plan to clean city air with giant sprinklers attached to skyscrapers, Gizmodo reports. (Though one China paper has argued the smog is good for national security.)