Graduate students from China’s Southwest University test water quality in an underground river beneath Yunnan Province’s East Mountain Plateau. About 30,000 rural residents of this dry plateau, many of them of the Yi and Hani Minority Nationalities, face significant challenges related to water supply due to the area’s karst topography, where most water flows underground in caves. This training took place during a 2007 USAID RDM/A supported workshop for water resource protection implemented by Western Kentucky University’s China Environmental Health Project.

China Environmental Health Project

A project led by Western Kentucky University's Hoffman Environmental Institute and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Our Mission
The purpose of the China Environmental Health Project (CEHP) is to develop U.S.-Chinese partnerships to build the capacity of Chinese scientists, university students, local governments, civil society organizations, and citizens to understand and find solutions to two pressing environmental health threats: (1) coal emissions on the eastern coast and (2) degraded water in the karst regions of southwest China.

The Challenge
Millions of rural and urban citizens in China suffer from health problems and constraints to economic development due to air pollution from coal and contamination or shortages of water. In southwest China, water challenges are particularly acute due to that region’s karst geology, where much of the water flows underground through caves rather than at the surface. These health problems are yet another burden on tens of millions of subsistence farmers who live below China’s poverty threshold of $85 per year. Urban China is not immune to growing environmental health threats—on the highly urbanized east coast, emissions from coal-fired electric power plants have been a leading cause in growing respiratory illnesses and early deaths (400,000 annually).

The China Environmental Health Project
For 15 years, scientists at Western Kentucky University (WKU)—together with Chinese university counterparts and a number of U.S. government agencies and other organizations—have been undertaking applied research and training projects focused on enhancing Chinese infrastructure and technical capacity to find solutions to safe drinking water challenges in southwest China’s limestone karst regions and to monitor emissions from coal burning on the urbanized east coast.

In October 2006 WKU’s research efforts coalesced into the China Environmental Health Project (CEHP). With major support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and matching funds from partner organizations, WKU’s Hoffman Environmental Research Institute and Institute for Combustion Science and Environmental Technology will carry out CEHP in partnership with the China Environment Forum (CEF) at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), as well as with Chinese scientists from the School of Geography at Southwest University of China near Chongqing and the Anhui University of Science and Technology in Huainan. The main focus of this collaborative environmental health project is promoting university partnering to enhance technical infrastructure in air quality analysis, hydrogeology, and geographic information systems computer mapping technology. Besides the scientific component of the karst water and coal activities, there is also a strong community outreach and education component to CEHP.

Karst Water Component
The water component will utilize on-the-ground demonstration projects in karst regions of Chongqing and Yunnan to serve as a training vehicle for Chinese researchers while also providing direct benefit in water supply and quality to residents in the project areas. Dr. Chris Groves and Dr. Pat Kambesis are the lead WKU researchers for the karst work, working with Professor Yuan Daoxian from the School of Geography at Southwest University of China.

Coal Component
The coal component—led by WKU’s Dr. Wei-Ping Pan—will focus on increasing air quality monitoring capacity in the city of Huainan (Anhui Province) and on implementing related health impact studies in the city. Dr. Pan’s key partner is the vice-president of the Anhui University of Science and Technology, Dr. Mingxu Zhang.

Community Outreach and Information Dissemination Component
At each project site, CEF and IIRR will be training local NGOs and research institutes to help communities work with the U.S. and Chinese scientists. CEF and IIRR will also create seminars, publications, or other types of outreach for government officials, Chinese journalists, scientists, and interested citizens on the environmental health issues addressed by CEHP. Besides on-the-ground work, CEF is creating a new environmental health website for posting project CEHP papers and updates, as well as information, news, and research on other environmental health challenges in China. CEF will also focus most of its monthly meetings in Washington DC on issues of environmental health and public participation in the environmental sphere in China. The 2007 and 2008 issues of CEF’s flagship publication– the China Environment Series – will feature special reports on the CEHP’s activities, as well as papers and reports on broader environmental health trends, policy, and activism in China.

News
3 China Environmental Health Project Research Briefs Highlighted in "Organic Trends"
JANUARY 2008 - 2 Research Briefs by Natalie Baer on Organics in China, and 1 by Yang Yang on Pesticides in China Were Featured in This Month's Edition

China Launches National Environmental Health Action Plan
DECEMBER 2007 – SEPA and the MOH Collaborate on China’s First NEHAP

November China Environmental Health Project Research Brief Now Available
NOVEMBER 2007 - "The Spread of Organic Food in China" is now online