Smog said to reduce water pollution

Chinese scientists have discovered that smog can indirectly reduce water pollution.

Chen Fahu, research director of Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems at Lanzhou University, discovered that a high level of man-made aerosol - a colloid of particles or droplets in the air, such as smog - has weakened the summer monsoons in the Chinese Loess Plateau, an elevated region in Northwest China famed for its mineral-rich, but highly eroded, soil.

The weakened monsoons have led to less rainfall in the region and therefore less soil has been washed into the mountain lakes and rivers, reducing eutrophication - a form of water pollution in which excessive nutrients, mainly phosphates and nitrogen, cause algal blooms - according to Chen's published findings in Nature Climate Change, an international science journal, earlier this month.