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hatrack

(59,442 posts)
Mon Jan 14, 2013, 08:52 AM Jan 2013

Beijing Travel Tip: Don't Breathe - Air Pollution Level Thirty Times WHO Safe Limit

When it comes to air pollution, the long-suffering residents of Beijing tend to think they have seen it all. But this weekend, instruments measuring the levels of particulate matter in the city's famously noxious air broke all records.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre said levels of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter, had reached more than 600 micrograms per square metre in many areas, and Reuters said it may even have hit 900 – its worst-ever reading. The World Health Organisation considers a safe daily level to be 25.

The artist Ai Weiwei offered his own succinct commentary on the city's atmospheric conditions by donning a gas mask in a photograph he posted on Twitter, his salt-and-pepper beard and tufts of hair sticking out around the device amid the smog.

Children and the elderly were urged to stay indoors and some residents who ventured out wore face masks as the acrid murk entered its third day. Air quality has long been a problem in the Chinese capital, but this weekend saw levels more than 30 times above the level judged safe by the World Health Organisation.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/13/beijing-breathe-pollution

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Beijing Travel Tip: Don't Breathe - Air Pollution Level Thirty Times WHO Safe Limit (Original Post) hatrack Jan 2013 OP
Hey China... isn't unregulated capitalism just grand? gtar100 Jan 2013 #1
they need a new scale! nt NYC_SKP Jan 2013 #2

gtar100

(4,192 posts)
1. Hey China... isn't unregulated capitalism just grand?
Mon Jan 14, 2013, 10:26 AM
Jan 2013

No air quality control standards, no pollution controls, no environmental protections. Why do you think all these American businessmen were so interested in moving their operations over to you? Did you think it was only because of your willingness to treat your people like slaves?

You got your thriving economy, now figure out how to live with it.

For some reason this sounds so deja vue-like. I wonder if anyone in Pittsburgh feels the same way.

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