Cities around the Bohai Sea are one of the main population cluster areas in China, which are characterized by high levels of sustainability performance and human capital, as well as resource-intensive industries. In this study, levels of economic development metrics and emissions of air pollutants (BC, CO, NH3, NOx, OC, PM2.5, PM10, and SO2) and CO2 across eleven cities around the Bohai Sea from 2008 to 2017 were compared to illustrate the potential relationships between air pollutants/carbon emissions and socioeconomic developments. Meanwhile, the associations between the levels of economic development metrics (GDP per capita), emissions, and energy use per GDP have also been examined. Large differences across these 11 cities presenting different economic development levels and energy consumption characteristics have been observed. Cities with development dependable on the consumption of fossil fuels and the development of resource-intensive industries have emitted large amounts of air pollutants and CO2. Furthermore, the emissions and energy use per GDP for all the cities follow environmental Kuznets curves. The comparison results suggested that the developing cities dependable on resource-intensive industries around the Bohai Sea would obtain greater socioeconomic benefits owing to the interregional cooperation policies under top-down socioeconomic development plans and bottom-up technology development, accompanied by reduced emissions of air pollutants and CO2.

Combined with the physical isolation feature of greenhouse, the popularization of greenhouse throughout China makes the pollution of greenhouse soils more noteworthy as a result of its high yielding food exposed to human beings. Here, a national-scale survey was conducted to evaluate the contamination status, contaminated sources and human health risks of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD) in greenhouse and open-field soils of 20 regions across China. The PCBs contents ranged from <LOD to 673.78 ng/g with the mean content of 77.38 ng/g in greenhouse soils and ranged from <LOD to 552.53 ng/g with the mean content of 61.90 ng/g in open-field soils. The HCBD contents ranged from 0.85 ng/g to 24.18 ng/g with the mean content of 8.33 ng/g in greenhouse soils and ranged from <LOD to 20.19 ng/g with the mean content of 6.39 ng/g in open-field soils. Among divided seven regions, higher levels of PCBs in greenhouse and open-field soils were found in north and south China. Furthermore, in most regions, correlation analysis indicated that soil PCBs in greenhouse and open-field were likely from the same emission sources. Higher levels of soil pollutants in greenhouse than in open-field may be contributed to the limited air-soil exchange. Compared with higher levels of ΣPCBs in greenhouse soils, the health risks of ΣPCBs in open-field soils were higher due to the higher percentages of high-toxicity PCBs, especially for the carcinogenic risks to children (> 10-6). This study provided a full insight into the contamination status and risks of PCBs and HCBD when guiding greenhouse agriculture activities.

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