Economic Observer reporter Zheng Chenye"The treatment of new pollutants will become an important factor affecting the construction of 'Beautiful China' and the high-quality social and economic development of China in the future. On January 9, at the lecture hall event of the academician of science and technology innovation hosted by the Shenzhen Institute of Innovation and Development and other institutions, Jiang Guibin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, said.
In recent years, with the development of pharmaceutical, energy, consumer electronics and other industries, the innovation of new materials in the above fields has promoted the formation of a series of new pollutants, including organic pollutants, endocrine disruptors, antibiotics, etc. These new pollutants have led to a range of new environmental problems, such as urban smog, pharmaceutical residues in rivers and lakes, heavy metal pollution in soil, and microplastic pollution in oceans and rivers.
Jiang Guibin said in his sharing that the treatment of new pollutants has received unprecedented attention from entering the "14th Five-Year Plan", to the release of the "Action Plan for the Treatment of New Pollutants", and then to the establishment of an expert group on the treatment of new pollutants by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
According to its introduction, at present, China's general idea for the treatment of new pollutants is: "to screen, to assess, to treat, to control." "Focusing on the prevention of environmental risks, through screening and assessment of the environmental risks of toxic and harmful chemicals, "screening and evaluating" new pollutants that need to be controlled and controlled, and then implementing whole-process control of them, including source prohibition and restriction of production and use, process emission reduction and end treatment.
New contaminants
What exactly is a new pollutant? From the perspective of improving the quality of the ecological environment and environmental risk management, new pollutants refer to toxic and harmful chemicals with the characteristics of biological toxicity, environmental persistence, and bioaccumulation, which pose a greater risk to the ecological environment or human health, but have not yet been incorporated into environmental management or existing management measures are still insufficient. When referring to the definition of new pollutants, Jiang Guibin pointed out in the on-site exchange.
He said that new pollutants have their commonalities and characteristics.
First and PM25. Compared with conventional pollutants such as PM10, sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), etc., the presence of new pollutants in the environment is not high, and it is not easy to attract public attention. secondly, new pollution is continuing to occur, and the stock in the environmental medium is relatively high; Finally, some synthetic or naturally occurring chemicals or microorganisms may cause potential toxic effects and health hazards in the environment, but the industry still lacks sufficient understanding of the sources of pollution and their toxicity, and there is also a lack of comprehensive scientific assessment of the environmental risks of new pollutants.
The reporter learned that there are four main categories of new pollutants that are of widespread international concern, including persistent organic pollutants, endocrine disruptors, antibiotics, microplastics, etc.
Why is there a problem with new contaminants? Engels once said that 'the emergence and development of science is determined by production from the very beginning', and if we did not have the production and use of bulk chemicals, and the society was in a primitive state, we would not face such a series of problems. Human life is inseparable from chemicals, and high-quality development requires many chemicals with special functions, but the rapid growth and use of chemicals are also the fundamental reason for the increasing number of new pollutants, and an inevitable practical challenge for social and economic development. Jiang Guibin said.
Judging from the name alone, except for microplastics, several other types of new pollution are very unfamiliar to ordinary people, but in fact they are closely related to everyone's daily life.
For example, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were once widely used as insulating materials in electronic products, have been banned by many countries, including China, but the material is still in high stock in the current environmental medium, posing a potential threat to human health. Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastics and phthalates in some personal care products can enter the body through food and water, affecting the reproductive and nervous systems.
Jiang Guibin pointed out that there are a large number of new pollutants with unknown structure, unknown content and unknown toxicity, and it is necessary to break through the bottleneck of new pollutant identification and traceability technology as soon as possible, and form a control technology for risk pollutants around the pollution control of new pollutants in different environmental media.
High-quality development requires a lot of chemicals with special functions, and the increase rate of chemicals is very fast, about 40,000 per day, 20% per year, and doubling every 5 years. Because chemicals are used in large quantities, these chemicals enter the environment, then enter the human body, and enter living organisms. Now there are a large number of pollutants in any land and any water body on the earth, such as the bottom mud of the Shenzhen River. How many contaminants are in our blood? Now it is not clear, there are some things we do not know its structure, nor do we know its toxicity, it has been circulating in our blood for many years, whether it will cause harm to human health, this requires us to study for a long time. Jiang Guibin said.
The new pollutants in the known structure are only the 'tip of the iceberg' in the total amount, so source management is very important, and many questions need to be answered through technical research, and it is difficult for us to deal with new pollutants without new technologies." Jiang Guibin further said.
Industrialization opportunities
Jiang Guibin said that China's research on new pollutants such as persistent organic pollutants has a history of 40 years, and the research on new pollutants is not too late, and the key problem at present is that basic research has not been well translated into policies, regulations and standards for governance. This shows that there is a problem of connection between policy management and scientific research in the field of pollution prevention and control, which makes basic research not completely and directly used by regulators.
For our country, the problem of traditional pollutants such as dioxins has not been solved for a long time, and the problem of new pollutants is superimposed. The problem of traditional pollutants and new pollutants also needs to be paid attention to, which does not mean that the problem of traditional pollutants is not important when we talk about new pollutants today. This involves the construction of a technical system for the coordinated control of conventional pollutants and new pollutants. He further stated.
According to incomplete statistics from the Economic Observer reporter, in 2023, 18 provinces and cities across the country, including Henan, Hebei, Hubei, Shandong, and Guangdong, have issued work plans to promote the treatment of new pollutants.
Taking Guangdong Province as an example, according to the new pollutant control work plan issued by the province last year, Guangdong Province plans to complete the first round of basic information survey of chemical substances in key industries and the first batch of detailed information surveys of chemical substances for priority assessment of environmental risks by the end of 2023, so as to basically grasp the production and use of toxic and harmful chemical substances in key areas and key industries in the province, the discharge status of new pollutants under key control, and the environmental and health risk status by 2025; In addition, we will implement environmental risk control measures such as prohibiting, restricting, and limiting the discharge of new pollutants under key control, and form a number of pilot projects and demonstration technologies for the treatment of new pollutants.
Jiang Guibin said that the treatment of new pollutants will involve all aspects of new materials, compounds and other industries, and will bring great opportunities in the fields of pollution control, cleaner production and green manufacturing.
In the past, it was normal for products containing perfluorinated compounds to be contained, but now some perfluorinated compounds have been restricted, and the process of promoting the landing of alternative compounds has led to the development of an industry. Overall, if we take the chemicals used today and the ones used in the past few decades, they are becoming safer, which is a big trend. Jiang Guibin said.
According to the reporter, at present, in the A-shares, there are 131 listed companies engaged in water pollution control, air pollution control, solid waste treatment and energy conservation, and the sum of revenue in the first three quarters of 2023 is 437.4 billion yuan, of which there are only 5 companies with revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan in the first three quarters, and the industry still has a lot of room for growth. Among the above-mentioned listed companies, as of January 10, the company with the highest total market value is Weiming Environmental Protection (603568SH), the market capitalization reached 282 on the same day200 million yuan.
In addition, with the rise of high-tech manufacturing industries such as new energy and semiconductors, the demand for solid waste, waste water and waste gas treatment in the above-mentioned industries has also increased in the A-share market recently.
In a research report released on December 19, 2023, Huafu** calculated that the domestic integrated circuit exhaust gas treatment system market space is about 23900 million yuan, the panel market space is about 5100 million yuan. With the development of the localization trend of semiconductors in China, it is expected that the demand for domestic pollution control will also increase in the future.
In the field of new energy photovoltaics, the new installed capacity of photovoltaics has increased significantly in recent years, in order to ensure the development of green energy and ensure that there is no new pollution in the power generation of equipment, the requirements for equipment pollution control are becoming more and more stringent, so the demand for environmental treatment in the new energy industry is expected to continue to increase. Huafu ** said in the research report.
Jiang Guibin also emphasized that the future trend of environmental management should change from traditional management to model-based technology, big data technology and AI technology. "In the past 20 years, we have done a lot of analysis work in the Bohai Rim, and through the analysis of big data on environmental pollution in the Bohai Rim, some problems have been well discovered, and many new trends have been summarized, which has helped us a lot. ”