International. China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment has categorically denied that new CFC-11 emissions were from its country, following a report published by Natura Magazine indicating that global CFC-11 emissions appear to have increased in recent years, with emissions in Shandong and Hebei provinces possibly accounting for "at least 40% to 60%" of the increase.
The Chinese ministry claimed law enforcement had been conducting surprise checks across the country and said any factory that discovered the use of ozone-depleting gas would be shut down.
The ministry said China's low-priced isolation in its homebuilding industry should not be blamed for the massive rise in gas emissions, claiming such practices were common in developing countries.
Matt Rigby, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Bristol, lead author of a related thesis, found last year that the pace of CFC-11 reduction worldwide stalled between 2013 and 2017, likely due to new illegal emissions.
Another lead author, Park Sun-young, of Kyungpook National University in South Korea, said an international team of atmospheric scientists collected additional data from monitoring stations in Taiwan and Japan and found no evidence of an increase in emissions from Japan. the Korean Peninsula or any other country, but there were "spikes" in pollution when air came from China's industrialized areas, such as those in the nation's three northeastern provinces.
The team also ran computer simulations that confirmed the origin of CFC-11 molecules to determine the exact origin.
In addition, reports published last year by the Environmental Research Agency (EIA), a non-governmental group, identified Chinese foam factories in coastal Shandong province and Hebei inland province as the source of new CFCs.
