Beijing air pollution at dangerously high levels

[Psalm 51:17]

Beijing air pollution at dangerously high levels
http://news.yahoo.com/beijing-air-pollution-dangerously-high-levels-022241052.html
1/16/14

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing's skyscrapers receded into a dense gray smog Thursday as the capital saw the season's first wave of extremely dangerous pollution, with the concentration of toxic small particles registering more than two dozen times the level considered safe.

The air took on an acrid odor, and many of the city's commuters wore industrial strength face masks as they hurried to work.

"I couldn't see the tall buildings across the street this morning," said a traffic coordinator at a busy Beijing intersection who gave only his surname, Zhang. "The smog has gotten worse in the last two to three years. I often cough, and my nose is always irritated. But what can you do? I drink more water to help my body discharge the toxins."

The city's air quality is often poor, especially in winter when stagnant weather patterns combine with an increase in coal-burning to exacerbate other forms of pollution and create periods of heavy smog for days at a time. But the readings early Thursday for particles of PM2.5 pollution marked the first ones of the season above 500 micrograms per cubic meter.

The density of PM2.5 was about 350 to 500 micrograms Thursday midmorning, though the air started to clear in the afternoon. It had reached as high as 671 at 4 a.m. at a monitoring post at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. That is about 26 times as high as the 25 micrograms considered safe by the World Health Organization, and was the highest reading since January 2013.

Serious air pollution plagues most major Chinese cities, where environmental protection has been long sacrificed for the sake of economic development. Coal burning and car emissions are major sources of pollution. In recent years, China has beefed up regulations and pledged financial resources to fight pollution.

In the far northeastern city of Harbin, some monitoring sites reported PM 2.5 rates of up to 1,000 micrograms in October, when the winter heating season kicked off. In December, dirty air gripped the coastal city of Shanghai and its neighboring provinces for days, with the density of PM 2.5 exceeding 600.

Beijing authorities said the haze on Thursday had reduced the visibility to several hundred meters (yards) and that the severe pollution was likely to continue through Friday.

[Psalm 51:17]

Notice how they're using this "greenhouse gases" and "climate change" propaganda...

Video: http://news.yahoo.com/video/china-39-smog-now-20-135346198-cbs.html
1/17/14
China's smog now 20 times worse than safe levels

Air pollution in Beijing reached hazardous levels earlier this week. CBS News' Seth Doane reports on how China's problem is becoming a worldwide concern.

[Kilika]

Seeing China has virtually no safety standards for manufacturing, there is no way they will clean up their city or country. What China is going through now is the same thing all the other industrialized countries went through in the early 1900's. The big problem is that China has no morals or standards being Communists. It's all about what you do for the state. The state couldn't care less about the people.

[Psalm 51:17]

China's unwelcome export to the US: air pollution
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/chinas-unwelcome-export-us-air-pollution-2D11967266
1/21/14

The U.S. may have sent jobs making cellphones and big-screen TVs to Chinese factories, but the pollution from those factories is coming back onshore.

China's famously foul urban air is blowing across the Pacific Ocean — much of it derived from factories that make popular consumer goods sold in the U.S. and Europe, according to a new paper by a group of researchers at the University of California at Irvine and other scientists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"When you buy a product at Walmart, it has to be manufactured somewhere," said co-author Steven Davis, an earth systems scientist at Irvine, in a press release. "The product doesn't contain the pollution, but creating it caused the pollution."

Air pollution is a major problem confronting China's leaders, who are coping with social, economic and environmental strains resulting from decades of rapid industrialization. A former Chinese health minister recently said that air pollution kills 500,000 people in China every year.

Most air pollution in the U.S. is produced locally by cars, trucks, refineries and other sources. But powerful global westerly winds can move airborne chemicals across the Pacific in days, according to the researchers.

The incoming dust, ozone and carbon is especially strong in the spring, causing dangerous spikes in contaminants that can accumulate in valleys and basins in California and other Western states, the study said. In Los Angeles, for example, the nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from Chinese factories pushes smog levels above U.S. federal ozone limits at least one extra day a year.

The researchers said their study is the first to quantify how much of the pollution is tied to the production in China of cellphones, televisions and other consumer items exported to the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The scientists note that while Chinese pollution exports have degraded air quality in Western states, the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing has improved air quality in the eastern half of the country.