Beijing Air Pollution off the Charts

[Ray]

Beijing office workers wear 'gas masks' at their desks as hazardous smog envelops city

Office workers in Beijing have resorted to wearing gas-mask style protective headgear at their desks as residents across northern China battled through choking pollution.

A woman wearing a mask for protection from pollution walks through the haze in Beijing on Jan 29, 2013

Air quality levels rose above index limits in Beijing amid warnings that the smog may not clear until Thursday.

Visibility was reduced to around 200 metres in the centre of the capital, where mask-wearing pedestrians made their way through a murky haze, despite warnings from authorities to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary.

In a Beijing city office visited by news agency Agence France-Presse, up to 20 workers wore the protective headgear at their desks, and the cloud of pollution shrouded large swathes of the country for the second consecutive day.

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) showed vehicles using full headlights in mid-morning to light a way through the smog, mainly in the badly affected central province of Henan.

A total of 109 flights were cancelled at Zhengzhou Airport in Henan, said CCTV, adding that the haze would last until Thursday.

In the eastern province of Shandong, almost 2,000 passengers were stranded at Qingdao's main airport after it shut with 20 flights cancelled as visibility dropped to 100 metres, according to the Xinhua news agency

A man rides past tourists awaiting the flag-raising ceremony during severe pollution at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Jan 29, 2013.

It is at least the fourth time a dense cloud of haze has descended on northern China this winter, with even state media repeatedly expressing anger over the issue.

The China Daily reiterated its calls for firm action on Tuesday, directing them at the capital's newly-installed mayor Wang Anshan, who formally took over on Monday.
"What do Beijing residents expect of their new mayor?" asked the newspaper in an editorial. "Of all the things that need improving, cleaner air will be at the top of many people's wish list."

Wang was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying: "The current environmental problems are worrisome."

The US embassy's air quality index (AQI) reading for Beijing stood at 475 and "hazardous" at 12pm on Tuesday, after having reached 517, or "beyond index", at 6am.

The index rates a reading over 150 as "unhealthy", above 300 as "hazardous", while anything over the upper limit of 500 is regarded as "beyond index".

Meanwhile, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre gave the figure as 414 at noon, indicating the capital's air was "severely polluted".

The toxic air follows an extreme bout of pollution earlier this month, peaking on January 13 when state media said readings for PM 2.5, particles small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs, reached 993 micrograms per cubic metre, almost 40 times the World Health Organization's recommended safe limit.

At the height of the smog, many residents rushed to buy facemasks and air purifiers, and doctors at two of Beijing's major hospitals said the number of patients with respiratory problems had increased sharply during the period.

China's pollution problems are blamed on the country's rapid urbanisation and dramatic economic development.

But experts have raised questions over China's will and ability to tackle car and coal use, which are seen as key causes of the phenomenon.

Beijing office workers wear 'gas masks' at their desks as hazardous smog envelops city - Telegraph

 

[t_co]

Seriously somebody in the Beijing municipal government and/or Environmental Agency needs to get fired over this. Disgusting

 

[Ray]

One has to realise that pollution is not because of the Governor or whoever is the head.

It is based on the policy that the country has on limiting instruments that create the pollution.

It depends upon planning of pollution industries locations and the number of cars and vehicles allowed.

It is a systemic failure in the rush to modernise and industrialise.

China has one of the best subway systems.

Therefore, why are the people wanting to travel by their own cars when the subway is so convenient.

Social attitudes require change. One does not have to show wealth by driving gas guzzling and polluting SUVs to show that they are better than their neighbours!

Unlike other countries Chinese Govt has to just give the order and the people will have to fall in line.

It is time that cars go off the road, industries relocated and all encouraged to use the subway or public transportation, which anyway, is said to be very good!

 

[t_co]

One has to realise that pollution is not because of the Governor or whoever is the head.

It is based on the policy that the country has on limiting instruments that create the pollution.

It depends upon planning of pollution industries locations and the number of cars and vehicles allowed.

It is a systemic failure in the rush to modernise and industrialise.

China has one of the best subway systems.

Therefore, why are the people wanting to travel by their own cars when the subway is so convenient.

Social attitudes require change. One does not have to show wealth by driving gas guzzling and polluting SUVs to show that they are better than their neighbours!

Unlike other countries Chinese Govt has to just give the order and the people will have to fall in line.

It is time that cars go off the road, industries relocated and all encouraged to use the subway or public transportation, which anyway, is said to be very good!

Actually, there are only sixteen cities with subways in China (the most cities with metro systems of any country in the world, but still a small number considering how many large cities China has). All of those subway systems are constantly operating under max capacity. Visit a Beijing or Guangzhou or even Shenzhen or Hangzhou subway at rush hour, and you'll find it's standing-room-only with trains coming once every two or three minutes. (This is the same in other large metro systems I've used--NYC, Seoul, Tokyo, Paris, London).

Public transit alone is not a good solution for reducing urban traffic flow. Instead, the right solution is to build smarter, by putting people closer to where they work. This is an area where I think China, quite frankly, has failed. Chinese urban planners are using the car-centric ideas of Le Courbusier--spaced out apartment blocks and office towers separated by tracts of green space and wide, broad avenues--when they should be using the pedestrian-centric, dense-mixed ideas of Stirling, Jacobs, and Colin Rowe. Sure, the former is cool to look at on a planning board, but it's inconvenient and wasteful of time and energy to live in. The latter might look messy and underdeveloped at first, but it's been proven to deliver better results over time.

This doesn't mean that cities shouldn't go and invest in infrastructure or knock down and replace old housing. Instead, cities should do that--but then strive to accomplish three things in their redevelopment plan:

1. Increase population density
2. Increase average living space per capita
3. Decrease commute time

to accomplish the ultimate goal:

4. Increase the amount of GDP produced off one unit of energy consumption and/or hour of human labor

Obviously, 1 and 2 are mutually contradictory--but they can both be achieved with techniques like building taller apartment buildings with fewer apartments per floor, and giving developers incentives to put land-hungry but 'non-people' uses such as parking garages and utilities underground. Basically, build taller, pack tighter. Point 3 can be thought of maximizing the number of efficient pathways between commercial and residential buildings to minimize the chances for bottlenecks and catastrophic network failure (a traffic jam on one highway causing chain-reaction traffic jams all across the city--something that happens often on the idiotic ring highway system of Beijing, for example). And finally, point 4 is the ultimate goal of urban planning, and the major contribution that smart urban planning brings the larger table of political stability and economic growth.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Seriously somebody in the Beijing municipal government and/or Environmental Agency needs to get fired over this. Disgusting

There is a more positive approach:

Collaboration with China | Asia | International Programs | US EPA

Air quality

Collaborative work to better understand, manage, and improve air quality has helped officials in China address regional air quality issues and achieve cleaner air for the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo.

For example, advanced pollutant modeling techniques, which enable us to evaluate the predicted effects of different approaches to air quality management, are being jointly applied in both countries.
Air quality management approaches have been integrated into recently issued national guidance, as well as into the upcoming revision to China's Air Pollution Control Law.
EPA and Chinese colleagues have worked closely together to retrofit 9,000 trucks and buses in the Beijing area with diesel particulate filters.
Advancing efforts to make environmental information more public and transparent, EPA and the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau piloted a real-time air quality information system at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

 

[amoy]

Indeed worrisome >> a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution >> NASA - New Map Offers a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution

The problematic particles, called fine particulate matter (PM2.5), are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, about a tenth the fraction of human hair. These small particles can get past the body's normal defenses and penetrate deep into the lungs.

CHINA

The World at a glance

Maybe we shall join the exodus

 

[t_co]

Indeed worrisome >> a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution >> NASA - New Map Offers a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution



CHINA

The World at a glance

Maybe we shall join the exodus

Those pictures are just sad. But why are particulate levels in the Gobi desert, Saharan desert and Middle East also so high, while levels in the American Southwest are so low?

 

[Ray]

The Chinese Govt has ordered the temporary closure of polluting industries near Beijing.

The Chinese are lucky that they have to listen to their Govt.

In Indian cities we must grow more trees.

We may not have the levels as in China, but we are also not getting any better.

We have to wake up!

 

[t_co]

There is a more positive approach:

Collaboration with China | Asia | International Programs | US EPA

Air quality

Fair enough, although still a drop in the bucket. On any given weekday, there are between 6 and 8 million cars cruising the streets. 9000 trucks is less than one out of every five hundred vehicles.

What's more, China now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. This is plainly unsustainable. China needs to really get its act together on building a better way to generate energy. I remember talking to guys in the NDRC who described the search for clean energy as a matter of 'basic principles' and 'life and death' for China, so I guess it's good that the top levels of government are at least thinking about this.

 

[Tolaha]

Those pictures are just sad. But why are particulate levels in the Gobi desert, Saharan desert and Middle East also so high, while levels in the American Southwest are so low?

The type of sand!

I found the colour code of western part of China surprising!

 

[amoy]

The type of sand!

I found the colour code of western part of China surprising!

Do u refer to the blue part - Southwest - part of Sichuan, Yunnan Tibet and Qinghai? Humid there, the origins or main streams of big major rivers - Yarlung Zangbo, Yellow River, Long River (Yangtze), and Lancang (Mekong).

 

[Tolaha]

Do u refer to the blue part - Southwest - part of Sichuan, Yunnan Tibet and Qinghai? Humid there, the origins or main streams of big major rivers - Yarlung Zangbo, Yellow River, Long River (Yangtze), and Lancang (Mekong).

No no! The blue part is perfectly understandable!

I was referring to the red part in Western China, the part that borders Central Asian countries and India. It's around the Tarim basin.

 

[amoy]

No no! The blue part is perfectly understandable!

I was referring to the red part in Western China, the part that borders Central Asian countries and India. It's around the Tarim basin.

Do u know an ancient Chinese novel 《Pilgrimage to the West 》？ The Monkey King in it is said to be modeled on Hanuman in Ramayana.

On their journey Monkey King and his company passed by Flaming Mountain (from the name u can imagine how critical it is!) that's in Tarim Basin.

Monkey King - Sun Wukong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Journey to the West - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Tolaha]

Do u know an ancient Chinese novel 《Pilgrimage to the West 》？ The Monkey King in it is said to be modeled on Hanuman in Ramayana.

On their journey Monkey King and his company passed by Flaming Mountain (from the name u can imagine how critical it is!) that's in Tarim Basin.

Monkey King - Sun Wukong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Journey to the West - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for sharing this information! Hadn't realised that the Monkey King I saw in some movie was derived from Chinese legends! The character does show remarkable similarity to Hanuman as in its undefeatable strength, immortality, ability to fly and transform into any shapes. However, the story has to be a original Chinese work wherein it shows many shades of negativity that isn't associated with Hanuman.

Association of the Monkey King with "Om mani padme hum", 'Vajrapani', 'Paramita' are surprising!

I have to go through the series on "Pilgrimage to the West" some day.

For the topic in hand, are you alluding that the extreme heat in the Tarim Basin causes environment deterioration in Western China?

 

[amoy]

For Tarim, and Western China at large, the terrain, decreased precipitation, reduced water flow, over farming, and various factors may together, contribute to the environmental deterioration

The Tarim Basin is the biggest arid inland basin in China. The Tarim River Basin is located in the southern half of Xinjiang. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides and is a closed-basin with no outlet to the sea. Most of the inner area of the basin comprises the Taklamakan Desert.

The detected negative runoff trend of the main stream of the Tarim River can be explained by anthropogenic activities (such as irrigation and domestic water use) and climatic changes. A quantitative assessment reveals that local human activities since the 1970s led to a decrease of the water volume diverted into the main stream of the Tarim River Basin, which has been aggravated in the 2000s.

Change of Climate and Hydrology in the Tarim River Basin during Past 40 Years and Their Impact--《Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology》2003年03期

 

[amoy]

 

[W.G.Ewald]

China air pollution "beyond index" - sullivanjournal.com: Outdoors: environment, air, pollution,

BEIJING (AP) — In the first two months of 2013 Beijing's air pollution has kept schoolchildren indoors and sent coughing residents to hospitals, but this time something is different about the murky haze: the government's transparency in talking about it.

Even state-run media gave the smog remarkably critical and prominent play. "More suffocating than the haze is the weakness in response," read the headline of a front-page commentary by the Communist Party-run China Youth Daily. Government officials — who have played down past periods of heavy smog — held news conferences and posted messages on microblogs discussing the pollution.

Air pollution is a major problem in China due to the country's rapid pace of industrialization, reliance on coal power, explosive growth in vehicle ownership and disregard for environmental laws, with development often taking priority over health. The pollution typically gets worse in the winter because of an increase in coal burning.