Inside Beijing's Airpocalypse
December 17, 2014 10:47 AM   Subscribe

"If all the other schools have a dome, then we’ve got to have a dome." Inside Beijing's airpocalypse, a city made 'almost uninhabitable' by pollution
posted by gottabefunky (61 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
"where's my jet pack? Where's my domed future cities? Oh shit."
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


One of my good friends covered the Beijing Olympics for a U.S. newspaper. All he could talk about in my sporadic communications with him during that time was how bad the air quality was, and how the official weather report every day was "clear, blue sky".
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:55 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


The various AQI apps are incredible, with block-by-block breakdowns on particulates and toxins and everything possible. Incredible, and also frequently terrifying.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:56 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also scary/disgusting: 12-24% of the smog in Los Angeles air comes from China
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:59 AM on December 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


The Soil Pollution Crisis in China. The air pollution settling into the top soil of farmland. "One official says soil remediation in China ‘will be on a far bigger scale than either air or water cleanup.’"
posted by stbalbach at 10:59 AM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

The same applies more strongly to politicians, c.f. Rubio and Cuba.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:00 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


OMG, that is terrible. What sort of practical solutions are there in the short-term to clean up the air?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:01 AM on December 17, 2014


I lived in Beijing in 2001 - 2002 and the air quality was...well, I'm sure it wasn't great, but honestly, it beat the hell out of Shanghai in 1996 -97, and the winter winds absolutely scoured the skies. My dominant impression of Beijing in the late nineties/early 2000s was one of blueness...the blue hills outside the city, the dizzyingly bright blue sky and the cold wind, blue ice on the ornamental lakes. That was right before they dramatically loosened controls on cars in the city, so traffic was bad but not terrible and you could still get around by bike. Things must have just fallen off a cliff right after I left.
posted by Frowner at 11:05 AM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Daan Roosegaarde’s plan for a smog-free park uses buried coils of copper to create an electrostatic field that attracts smog particles.

Goodbye smog, hello ground-level ozone.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:05 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


They can clean up the air really quickly -- they did for the Olympics and again for the APEC. Blue skies, everything beautiful. It's just a matter of enforcing existing regulations (and taking the economic hit).
posted by vogon_poet at 11:06 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just reading that made me feel claustrophobic. I wonder how soon it'll be before the health effects really start hitting.

The answer (as the article points out at the bottom) is aggressive reduction of polluters. It sounds like there's no political will though.
posted by leo_r at 11:06 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


And Beijing was such a beautiful city in so many of its aspects, too, well located and well laid out on the points of the compass, easy to navigate, temples and ancient stuff that survived the Cultural Revolution (unlike in Shanghai, where there's very little), the hutong district, the parks....I just can't get my head around what it must be like now.
posted by Frowner at 11:07 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Reception classes stay indoors when the air quality index (AQI) hits 180 – measured on an official scale of 500 by various sensors across the city. For primary kids the limit is 200, while the eldest students are allowed to brave the elements up to 250. Anything above 300 and school trips are called off. The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, recommends a safe exposure level of 25.

I lived much of my life in a city that often wins "most polluted city in the US" (Not what you're thinking. Salt Lake City.) This puts it into perspective -- we avoided going out on bad days, which had an AQI of maybe 180. The reporter says it was 460 in Beijing. It's hard to imagine.
posted by mmoncur at 11:08 AM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


The thing that bugged me about this article was that there was almost no attention paid to the causes of air pollution in Beijing:

- Coal-fired power plants
- Airborne dust from arid regions surrounding Beijing and to the north, northeast, and east (eg, Gobi Desert)
- Cooking and heating using charcoal
- Industrial plants
- Diesel exhaust
- The interaction of particulate matter with ozone to create petrochemical smog

As "APEC Blue" demonstrates, there is a solution to the problem: reduce pollution. In the long term you don't need cloud seeding or air tanks or bubbles or whatever.

You just need to cut down on pollution.

Beijing may be the future of *some* cities on the planet, but it doesn't have to be.

Interesting article though, since this crap blows across the Sea of Japan to afflict Japanese cities with PM2.0 pollution, which never used to happen. Terrifying.
posted by Nevin at 11:10 AM on December 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


One of my good friends covered the Beijing Olympics for a U.S. newspaper. All he could talk about in my sporadic communications with him during that time was how bad the air quality was, and how the official weather report every day was "clear, blue sky".

I was in Beijing for the Olympics and it honestly wasn't that bad. Sure, the sky was a hazy gray, but I didn't have any respiratory problems or notice anything weird about breathing. That said, the government had ordered a lot of pollution-producing activities to be suspended for the Olympics (factories stopped work and only half of the cars could drive on any given day, decided by even- or odd- numbered license plates), so the pollution situation was better than normal.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:11 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Steps are being taken. We recently had a delay in goods from China due to an anti-pollution stop-work order.
posted by No Robots at 11:12 AM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


the blue hills outside the city, the dizzyingly bright blue sky and the cold wind, blue ice on the ornamental lakes

I was there for a full week before I realized that there were mountains nearby, even having driven right past them. There were whole weeks of the aqi being in the high 400s, and the nearby buildings that should have been visible from the highway were just gray formless blobs only rendered visible by logos or advertising. Also I had my first asthma attack in 10 years before the plane even landed.

In comparison the mild migrainey soroche I got in Kunming was a relief.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:13 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Just reading that made me feel claustrophobic. I wonder how soon it'll be before the health effects really start hitting.

Cancer in China is already exploding. Though a huge amount of that comes from endemic smoking among Chinese men.
posted by Naberius at 11:15 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


I lived in Beijing between 2004-2005 and the pollution was routinely so bad that from the window of our sixth-floor classroom, you couldn't see anything except for gray haze... not adjacent buildings, not the ground, not anything. Even walking on the sidewalk, it was eerie to only be able to vaguely see to the end of the block, or nothing at all from the pedestrian bridge (which didn't help my fear that I would be riding my bike under the pedestrian bridge and get unintentionally spat on by a Beijinger doing their vigorous throat-clearing ritual). Once I was riding my bike to school and, looking skyward, idly noted how bright the moon still was for that time of morning, until I realized I had been staring at the smog-obscured sun the whole time, whose feeble light I had mistaken for lunar.

I do remember some clear days: most notably, the week of October 1st, National Day, when most factories and offices were closed for the whole week. Then you could see the blue sky, also in the winter, during Chinese New Year.

I was on a year-long exchange program, one of the unusual stipulations for which was that asthmatic pupils were strongly discouraged from applying, or embarking on the program, especially not without a doctor's note.
posted by Aubergine at 11:17 AM on December 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


My brother lived in Beijing for three years in the early 2000s, and as a lifelong bicyclist, he tried to ride to work. After the 2nd or 3rd time he got bronchitis, he bought an electric bicycle. :-(
posted by suelac at 11:17 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map This is frankly horrifying
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:17 AM on December 17, 2014 [11 favorites]


The shocking thing is that Beijing is a place of privilege where they've made an effort to keep the coal stacks away. Many cities in the interior have been like this or worse for decades. I speak from raspy-throated experience.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:19 AM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


When people tell you that regulations and the EPA are killing their economy point to this. Without the hard work and foresight of people in the 1960s and 70s this could have been modern day New York, LA, Chicago or the SF Bay Area.
posted by Talez at 11:22 AM on December 17, 2014 [41 favorites]


Here's a day-by-day photo collection. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it ain't.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:23 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map This is frankly horrifying

It gets much worse later in the winter and early spring, when it is very very dry in NE Asia and the spring westerlies start to blow massive amounts of dust from the Gobi Desert and Loess Plateau across China's northeast industrial heartland.

The pollution values on that map turn to an angry turd colour (ie, well above 400).

On top of that, the early spring weather pattern of westerlies sweeps this crap all across the Korean Peninsula (note the green values right now).

The sand, which has picked up particulate crap from the smokestacks of China's NE, flows across the sea of Japan, interacting with sea-surface ozone and salt and so on to create more petrochemical smog which then blankets Japan.

This never used to happen say, at the turn of the century.

It's a massive massive problem.
posted by Nevin at 11:28 AM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


I was in Beijing for the Olympics and it honestly wasn't that bad. Sure, the sky was a hazy gray, but I didn't have any respiratory problems or notice anything weird about breathing.

Well, the air was much cleaner than usual, as you noted; but also the effects of this industrial pollution aren't all immediate. Which is one big reason that it has gotten so bad.
posted by clockzero at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2014


Even if they shut down all the manufacturing and car/truck/bus traffic and coal stove cooking in private homes and whatnot, they still have a hillion jillion tons of coal burning in neverending mine fires, don't they? It's hard not to respond to "what can be done about this" in other ways than just pulling the duvet over your head and saying no thank you sir not today.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:42 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


When people tell you that regulations and the EPA are killing their economy point to this. Without the hard work and foresight of people in the 1960s and 70s this could have been modern day New York, LA, Chicago or the SF Bay Area.
Talez

Statist stooge! Anyone who desired to move out of those polluted areas could have done so. Those left behind would have made a rational calculation based on their interests. If they had further complaints against any entity they could have been redressed by bringing the matter to a private court.

Much better than imposing the slavery of statist regulations on noble job-creating businesses.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:42 AM on December 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


Many photos of Beijing on the bad days remind me of the original Silent Hill video game.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:44 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just perfect. The dome haves, and the dome have nots.
posted by oceanjesse at 11:46 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


I very briefly lived in Incheon, South Korea, which is downwind of Beijing. I was naive and went for a run, wondering how come there were no other runners on the street, and not thinking anything of the yellow sky.

Instant horrible, wheezing lung infection. But the healthcare was good.

I can't imagine how they tolerate living in it full time.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 11:54 AM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Beijing's air's OK as long as you chew it carefully before swallowing
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 12:13 PM on December 17, 2014 [19 favorites]


I very briefly lived in Incheon, South Korea, which is downwind of Beijing. I was naive and went for a run, wondering how come there were no other runners on the street, and not thinking anything of the yellow sky.

I had a friend who taught English somewhere in Korea. He talked about how when he got there he was surprised at how dusty the city was, until he learned the 'dust' was pollution in the air that settled over everything. What got him the most is that when the young kids drew pictures with crayons their skies were rarely ever blue but yellow.
He ended up having to leave earlier then he planned because he developed some sort of asthma like condition for the first time in his life.

I can't even imaging having to live like this all the time. I'd like to visit China some day but this sort of pollution gives me the heebies and I wonder if it's worth it. Healthwise, would short term exposure do little long term damage?
posted by Jalliah at 12:21 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Many Beijingers tend to use the word “wumai” (meaning fog), rather than “wuran” (pollution), to describe the poor air quality – and not just because it’s the official Newspeak of weather reports. It’s partly because, one local tells me, “if we had to face up to how much we’re destroying the environment and our bodies every day, it would just be too much.”
This is not helping.
posted by Librarypt at 12:44 PM on December 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


Many Beijingers tend to use the word “wumai” (meaning fog), rather than “wuran” (pollution), to describe the poor air quality – "

Sounds like what they called "fog" in places like London, back when everyone heated with coal. After my mum returned from a visit to Belfast in the 90s, she kept talking about how much father she could see than when she lived there as a teenager in the 50s.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:00 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Once again- Usborne books are right on the money.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:15 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


About 8 years ago, I had a friend who moved to one of those Chinese manufacturing towns working as a executive for a shoe company. We grew up in CA. The poor air quality hit him so badly there, he asked his family to send him those two of those ozone air filters. Being an engineer, he rigged up a 2 pass system where the output of one filter would be channeled into the 2nd. He still needed to clean those things out weekly, and he was only filtering the air in his apartment and whatever outside air snuck in when he opened the door.
posted by Cog at 1:20 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


The poor air quality hit him so badly there, he asked his family to send him those two of those ozone air filters

Air-treatment companies make mountains of cash in China. Just look at Broad Group.
posted by aramaic at 1:22 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I guess SNL was just a few decades too early when they advertised a "Big Damn Plastic Bubble" to stick over your house.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:41 PM on December 17, 2014


Nonsense! According to reliable source Jackie Chan, the skies in Beijing are a beautiful crystalline blue.
posted by 1adam12 at 1:51 PM on December 17, 2014


The last straw for me when I was living in Beijing ('05-'07) was developing a mystery mucus sac on the surface of my eyeball.

From all reports, it's worse now than it ever was when I lived there. I can't comprehend how that is possible.
posted by zjacreman at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2014


Take a look on the interwebz for pics of what Pittsburgh looked like in the 50's.
posted by JPD at 2:04 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I visited Shanghai and Beijing in October 2012. Shanghai was overcast for most of the weekend, with a massive 24 hour rainstorm the last day I was there. This was incredible good fortune, as we had beautiful, crisp, clear fall weather for the first three days in Beijing. It was a lovely city. We could see forever on the Great Wall, and the Summer Palace sparkled in the sun. The last day, the smog returned with a vengeance. A tragedy.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:09 PM on December 17, 2014


I was in Beijing this year, and I got bronchitis during my visit. It reminded me of nothing so much as being in a garage that was filling up with carbon monoxide. A city bigger than the entire population of Australia, committing suicide by asphyxiation.

It's one reason why I think Xi Jingping and others in the CPC are serious about the climate change deal, at least so far as it applies to Beijing and Shanghai.... after all, they work there, and they have to breathe the same air, and their children do too...

I'm not saying the CPC has suddenly become Greenpeace. But self-preservation instincts are kicking in. The air is that bad.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:48 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


There's a pollution sensor in Ankara, Turkey, registering 849. I presume it's broken, or someone's idling a car next to it.
posted by cromagnon at 3:01 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


The sky over Beijing was the color of television, tuned to a brown channel.
posted by The Tensor at 3:05 PM on December 17, 2014 [12 favorites]


There's a pollution sensor in Ankara, Turkey, registering 849. I presume it's broken, or someone's idling a car next to it.

The numbers are not going to be terribly accurate, since the measurement stations or whatever are placed in an ad hoc fashion, and some of them may be broken. Some may be located next to a dual-carriageway, while others may be located on the 20th floor of a highrise.

It's more of an indication of air quality.
posted by Nevin at 3:21 PM on December 17, 2014


I lived in Beijing from 2007 to 2013. In that time I only heard one person use wumai rather than wuran to describe the pollution. Additionally, I thought the article's focus on the fantastic could have been balanced by a discussion of the realistic policies the government has enacted to combat the pollution: getting rid of coal heating and cooking in the city, severely limiting car registration, relocating factories, etc... The pollution problem in Beijing is not being ignored, it is just so calamitous that it seems nothing can halt it. While London and Los Angeles may have been able to find policies to solve their air pollution problems, they did not have to deal with close to twenty million people. I think it is this hopelessness that leads the people and government to grasp at such fantastical ideas like artificial rain to fix the problem.
posted by wobumingbai at 3:51 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's one reason why I think Xi Jingping and others in the CPC are serious about the climate change deal, at least so far as it applies to Beijing and Shanghai.... after all, they work there, and they have to breathe the same air, and their children do too...

Nothing that more money won't fix:
The Privileges of China’s Elite Include Purified Air

posted by meowzilla at 3:52 PM on December 17, 2014


The West has had 3 Centuries of unfettered industrial development. Maybe we should check our privilege and trust the Chinese to find their own solutions instead of clucking our tongues at their attempts to modernize?
posted by Renoroc at 4:05 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


bonobothegreat: Sounds like what they called "fog" in places like London, back when everyone heated with coal.

That'd be a pea souper, one of the worst of which, in 1952, was said to have killed 4000 and sickened 100,000.
posted by hangashore at 4:09 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I was in Beijing for a few months in 2010 for study abroad. Pretty much everyone on the study abroad ended up getting loads of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections. My cough to this day still sounds horrific because of whatever I managed to get in China. On really bad days, it felt like it was going to rain coal at any moment.

A few of my friends and I were able to spend a long weekend in Inner Mongolia. After we left Hohhot (that city also had terrible air), we were able to feel our throats opening and our sinuses unblocking. It was unreal. Luckily there was some great air (by China's standards) when we came back to Hohhot to take our train back into Beijing. During that trip, we felt all of our throats and everything closing up again.

Though, as I'm typing this, I'm trying to stare across Hong Kong harbor and barely able to see across....
posted by astapasta24 at 4:23 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Maybe we should check our privilege and trust the Chinese to find their own solutions instead of clucking our tongues at their attempts to modernize?

In a way you're right - Japan and the US Midwest and Europe used to be the scene of similar environmental desolation (although at a much, much reduced scale). And yet many industrial centers have been "cleaned up" (look at all of the green flags in Japan, which still has a sizeable heavy industry sector, notably along the Inland Sea). So there is reason to be hopeful about China.

However, this is not an issue about "checking our privilege" and wrinkling our noses in disgust.

The sheer scale and magnitude of what is happening in China means other countries and regions are being affected. If you're unfamiliar with Northeast Asia, it may be difficult for you to comprehend.

As I mentioned up-thread, this past winter when my region of rural Japan experienced its first-ever PM2.5 warning, where all children were told to stay inside, it was frightening. This had never happened before, and to see a wall of smog over the sea and then creeping up the valley, blotting out the sun is profoundly unsettling. And then to consider what PM2.5 can do to you. The particles cause cancer.

The sulphur particles cause acid rain, which have essentially wiped out red pine in much of western Japan. Cryptomeria are next.

And it's not just the 200M people in Korea and Japan that are being affected. This crap gets transported all the way across the Pacific.

But if you are unfamiliar with the geography, I can see how it is easy to think in abstract terms like "privilege."
posted by Nevin at 4:23 PM on December 17, 2014 [18 favorites]


Found this awesome interactive map on Quartz of all the main coal pollution sources in China.
posted by humanfont at 5:15 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's pretty hard not to think privilege when a week of blue sky during APEC is held up as a solution to China's massive pollution problem. Those blue skys were achieved by shutting down the city. This included things like the shipping of fresh produce into the city. While the people of Beijing could survive this for a week, I don't think it can be seriously considered a permanent solution.

The city is and has been working on fixing the pollution problem for over a decade: conversion to natural gas, massive development of public transportation, electric busing, replacement of all home coal burning, the outlawing of shishkebab stands, continuing car bans based on licenses plate numbers, taxis run on natural gas, the complete conversion of all centralized heating away from coal by 2015, government subsidized solar hot water, and on and on; however, the ridiculous growth of the city means that all of these measures have not been enough.

Japan and South Korea have made significant progress in fighting pollution but this was done over several decades with massive investments from America, with less than a third of the population of China and off shoring some of the worst polluters to China.

So yes it is a horrible global problem and perhaps the agreements that come out of APEC will be global solutions rather than the sideshow of APEC blue, the reporting of which really does feel like orientalism rather than a serious consideration of China and the world's pollution problem.
posted by wobumingbai at 5:22 PM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


The "huge strides" in Japan happened over just 20 years in the 70's and 80's, when the country got serious about cleaning up its environment.

In China, the massive industrial growth that is causing this desolation (and it is getting worse and worse every year) dates back to the late 90's and the privatization of state industries. So it's likely going to take twenty years for things to get better.

I don't see how it can be called "orientalism" though to suggest that China, where *no* city in the northeast has clean air, is facing an environmental crisis.
posted by Nevin at 7:25 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Reporting there is a crisis is not orientalism. There are good reports that do this. What I am calling orientalism are the myriad of stories that drown those good reports by focusing on the "weird" stuff like all the APEC blue articles lthat are similar to the linked one. Sorry about being unclear about what I was referring to as orientalist in the previous comment.
posted by wobumingbai at 7:48 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


70% of China's electricity comes from coal. Also they have a number of heating plants that provide steam to homes in winter that are coal powered, Iirc there are still three operating in Bejing. In the countryside people still use coal in their furnaces in winter and it is subsidized by the government.

Trying to remove pollutants after they have dispersed from the point sources is not going to be cost effective.

The scale of this problem is enormous and 20 years is probably an aggressive timeline when one considers the number of projects, the political issues, and the complexity and costs of each.
posted by humanfont at 8:14 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Particle size matters for the health impact. The visible larger particles that cause the hazy overcast smog in the air are less dangerous to you than the tiny particles that you breathe all the way down and are small enough to even go into your bloodstream. That's why a clearish day with a high PSI 2.5 reading can be a worse health day for you than a hazy day with a lower PSI reading - and why the fineprint on the airmonitoring readings from different official sources is worth reading and comparing, because they don't distinguish on purpose to cover up how crappy the air is.
posted by viggorlijah at 10:28 PM on December 17, 2014


Evidence that a mother-to-be's exposure to air pollution affects her child's risk of autism "is becoming quite strong," said Harvard epidemiologist Marc Weisskopf. "It is not clear how tiny particles might cause autism, but they are covered with myriad contaminants and penetrate cells, which can disrupt brain development."

Pilot study suggests one per cent of Chinese population has autism.

The horror.
posted by stbalbach at 6:55 AM on December 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is hugely interesting to me, as I'm just finishing up a six-week posting in Beijing (my flight leaves tomorrow).

This was mentioned in the Guardian article, but is worth a direct link in this thread: the US Embassy in Beijing's air quality index: http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/us-embassy/

I arrived during the tail end of APEC blue. Once all the international elitny were safely out of town, the air pollution index shot back up over 300 (i.e., into the hazardous zone). Since then, I've seen it whipsaw back and forth, from under 50 (i.e., "good," but still up to twice the WHO recommended exposure) to into the 450 range. I've been atavistically thankful that I'm leaving before January, as this has been the month that in 2013 and 2014 has set the records for "worst pollution ever" in Beijing.

One day, I nipped across the street on my morning break for a coffee. Because the air quality was so bad, I ended up buying a face mask for the walk back - across the street. (Note, also, that my work sells face masks in the canteen, along with coffee and candy bars.)

In some ways, one of the worst effects of being in Beijing for an extended period of time is just how blasé people get about wearing face masks. Because I wear glasses, masks steam up my lenses; because I have facial hair, masks are uncomfortable; as a result, I've found myself pushing my luck and leaving the mask off until the air lack-of-quality hits 180 or so. And the terrible thing is that my colleagues think nothing of e.g. playing sports in 250 or so.

Another odd effect of my time here is that the only weather index I check is the US embassy's site linked above. The temperature itself is less of a concern, although the wind forecast is the subject of much superstitious hope. If the wind is blowing strong, that kicks the crap out of the air. That happened this morning - because of 45 kph gusts, the air index dropped about 300 points in about 2 hours.

Various posters above are quite right to excoriate the article for eliding the fact that this pollution has causes. Other posters are right to caution us against armchair quarterbacking. But the central fact remains that the air here is nigh-on-toxic to humans, and doesn't look to be getting any better: although the mantra of 8% GDP growth per annum has been relaxes, there's still a drive towards economic growth (as evidenced by having hosted the APEC summit). As long as economic growth in China is predicated on burning materials, especially in a less-than-controlled fashion, the air will continue to poison all those who breathe it.

** Depressing postscript in two parts
- First, face masks for humans have been mentioned in the article and this thread. However, many of the cheap ones worn by the locals are largely ineffective (link one, link two) - if you're going, be sure to get something N95 certified.
- Second, many of the locals have pets, mainly dogs & I haven't seen any air masks on them as they're taken on their walks to shit on the sidewalks (oh yeah, Beijingers are only slightly less bad at picking up dogshit than Parisians)
posted by The Outsider at 1:40 AM on December 19, 2014


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