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Breathing Beijing's Air Is the Equivalent of Smoking Almost 40 Cigarettes a Day
iONiUM writes: The Economist has a story about how bad the air quality is in Beijing. Due to public outcry the Chinese government has created almost 1,000 air quality monitoring stations, and the findings aren't good. They report: "Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America's highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested. Berkeley Earth's scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing's air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high."
First, If you ever seen pictures in china of the pollution sadly that number isn't a big surprise
What's that pipeloads of tobacco per semifortnight?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They have become what the Republicans here can only dream of. This is the future Republicans want for the entire planet.
When I lived in the Bay Area, there was a fire at a recycling plant that caused some reading to go 400, or 500 or something in Redwood City. It might have been particulates, not sure. They told people to shelter in place. Then a few months later I heard Beijing was at 600 simply because of the pollution, and there was some kind of advisory but otherwise people just went on about their lives.
Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China. Sigh. It's like there's only one city in China. Imagine if European journalists assumed New York City was all there was to know about the entire USA. And China is even bigger, and has four times the population! I think the problem is due to the fact that most Western journalists live in Beijing, and they are not really interested in reporting about anywhere else other than where they live. This is called closed-mindedness and provincialism if it occurs in rural people, but now it's suddenly acceptable?
If you want the real story, watch Chai Jing's documentary "Under the Dome" which tells you about all of China, not just the capital city. It was banned by the government so you know it's good. China has laws, but they're not enforced and the government regulators are either corrupt or falling down on the job. If they actually do crack down and take heavily polluting trucks off the road, they'll be accused of slaughtering the peasants with excessive regulations. Considering the history of the Communist Party in China, this accusation hurts badly and the CCP is anxious to bury this part of its Marxist past.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
How many cigarettes is that in a day? It bugs me when some people smoke near me. Argh!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Can we call it an 'invasion' or 'chemical warfare' and do our thing? If the borders can't stop the smog, why should they be able to stop us?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There's an exhibit called Bodies Revealed that showcases preserved human bodies - all of them from China - to show what our insides look like and just how big some of our organs are (they had one display that was just nerves, which was absolutely astounding). One of the exhibits shows off the lungs. I don't know if there are any pictures, but there are MASSIVE black spots on the lungs, the kind you'd expect to see in someone who smoked a lot. I remember the tour guide saying when someone asked that the black spots weren't from smoking, but from breathing in polluted air day after day. They weren't quite as bad as smoker's lungs, which get damaged over time from the heat of the cigarette smoke, but apart from that were identical in every way.
According to this report no Chinese city gets into the top 10 most polluted....
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world...
According to this 1 Xi'an is the worst in the world. With Phoenix being the worst American city at 97th worst, LA is 107th, London 171st
http://www.numbeo.com/pollutio...
I've been to Beijing, and I didn't look anywhere near as cool as a two-pack-a-day smoker.
So are there efforts to alleviate the levels of pollution in big cities of China?
This article is from April, and their data collection was presumably from some time before that. However, if you check the following map (updated hourly), it looks like the air is still terrible, despite China making some attempts to solve this problem:
http://aqicn.org/map/china/
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
I don't smoke Lucky Strikes, I smoke King Sized Camels.
When I lived in the Bay Area, there was a fire at a recycling plant that caused some reading to go 400, or 500 or something in Redwood City. It might have been particulates, not sure.
Yeah, that's a teensy bit down from Hiller. There was some suspicion of them not being able to handle the recycling load, and "accidentally" setting the materials on fire (the plant itself was untouched). Other theories included spontaneous combustion due to thermal rise during decomposition (only it was mostly paper).
It was particulates in the 76 or so today, due to smoke from the wild fires (which are actually pretty far away). Everyone got an emergency services robocall. Most places in China are about that, according to the monitoring mapping service (aqicn.org), but there are some that are running about double. Highest I saw was a 953 on the China/Kyrgystan border (kinda insane), and a couple real hotspots around Beijing.
I found it interesting that they shut down the San Francisco station (it must have been showing numbers that were unfavorable to San Francisco tourism). Worst in the U.S. is Medford Oregon; most other hot spots are in Washington State. There's a 229 in the Czech Republic. Russia has exactly one monitoring station; I'm going to guess it reports whatever Putin wants.
If you are interested in the world map (navigable Google Maps map), it's here (I left it centered on China):
http://aqicn.org/map/californi...
Cigarettes are quite expensive, so getting 40 a day for free is not that bad.
That being said, Beijing is located is a small depression and that results in all the heavier particles in the air hovering over the city instead of dispersing over a larger area.
This effect is strongest in the winter, as I experienced it when I visited the city about a decade ago. However, there are spontaneous "clearing events" when sudden winds blow away the smoke, and then the difference in the quality of the air is quite striking.
Natural selection will phase them out then maybe we can have our economy back.
I know this isn't evidence but when I was travelling in China, Beijing had a reputation for pollution. Most backpackers I met mentioned "Beijing lung" when talking about the city the gist of which was that after a week or two you'd get a nasty cough which would clear up when you left. I assumed this was an exaggeration or coincidence, but after having spent a week there I changed my mind.
After about 3 days in Beijing I was coughing up a nasty black phlegm, this lasted about 5 days until I left. I got a flight from Beijing to the UK and the cough cleared up immediately. This may be coincidence but the number of times I was warned of it by fellow travellers, combined with the timing and the fact I displayed no other symptoms I would associate with a cough makes me believe it was caused by pollution.
What if climate change were a big vegan tree-hugger leftist conspiracy but we cleaned up the planet anyway?
That's always been my position on climate change. Who cares if it's happening or why. Why can't we just clean up the environment to, you know, have a nice place to live...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Unfortunately China has no concept of being good neighbors to ANYBODY in regards to the environment.
"Pollution is sky-high"
I see what you did there.
Beijing's air is probably still better than Tianjin's is right now
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"
AQI200 = 150g/m x 18m/day (÷1,000) = 2.7mg/d ÷12 = 23% of one cigarette a day
AQI300 = 250g/m x 18m/day (÷1,000) = 4.5mg/d ÷12 = 38% of one cigarette a day
AQI500 = 500g/m x 18m/day (÷1,000) = 9.0mg/d ÷12 = 75% of one cigarette a day
"
http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/china-public-health/a-day-in-beijing-is-like-smoking-only-one-sixth-of-a-cigarette-its-almost-disappointing/
I was in China back in late April / early May of this year.
I was walking with my Chinese friend / interpreter late at night next to the Yalu river in Dandong, across from North Korea. It was a nice, cool evening, very refreshing.
I woke up the next morning with what felt like a very bad chest cold. Another friend bought me some Chinese cough medicine, which seemed to help a little. But shortly after, I went to Beijing, and I really did feel like my lungs were on fire! We walked around the Summer Palace, which is a LOT of walking up and down hills and stairs. The next day, we went to Tiananmen Square, and we were running to get in line to visit the Illustrious Chairman, lying in stately repose in his mausoleum. The running made me feel like someone slugged me in the chest with a sledgehammer! I was constantly wheezing and coughing. My Chinese friends seemed amused, as if I was playing up the bad quality of the air... they said it was worse than Shanghai, but they didn't think it was as bad as I was making it out to be.
I spent ten days in China, then returned to Korea for another week (the air in Seoul felt like the fresh countryside by comparison). The cough didn't go away for almost a whole month.
blow it over to the US.
Except that the climate scare has diverted lots of resources that would have otherwise gone to reducing pollution to reducing CO2 emissions. I am not sure that that is a net positive.
That sounds more realistic. It's still very bad though.
Your pop caught you smoking, and he said NO WAY!
That hypocrite breathes two packs a day!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was in Beijing in March of 2008 and again in December of 2014. The improvement has been amazing! It's still not wonderful, but they have made significant strides in cleaning up the air. The sky is actually BLUE in Beijing now instead of smog grey.
--zing
Welcome to The Wasatch Front in Winter, where exceedingly high levels of PM 2.5 are known to increase all manner of disease, including:
asthma in children, heart disease and cancer in adults and early onset of dementia in the elderly.
Gentleman, start your engines!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Population control. When you have a country of over a billion people, now with a taste of the good life, the expectation that their government can extend the ride for as long as necessary, and a repressive government that fears what may happen if they fail to deliver on that expectation... are you really trying to protect the population? Explosions, poor air quality, etc. lead to premature deaths. Premature deaths mean less burden on government to take care of people and fewer people to fear.
Many countries undercut our labor rates by having substandard conditions, including pollution. We should tariff such countries until they meet basic standards.
It would encourage them to both clean up, and pay realistic wages, making our products more competitive, thus reducing the trade deficit.
Table-ized A.I.
I visited a major city in China several years ago, and when I stepped off the plane I looked nearly straight up and saw a copper-red moon. "Oh gee, a lunar eclipse, how cool!"
It was not an eclipse.
Table-ized A.I.
First visit to the comments section?
Except that the climate scare has diverted lots of resources that would have otherwise gone to reducing pollution to reducing CO2 emissions. I am not sure that that is a net positive.
Bullshit, who would be doing this "clean-up" ? the corporations? Like the ones that have successfully lobbied to gut the clean air act every time the GOP gets in control?
Bask in the glory of the objectivist promised land!
The sensationalist headline is based on a quote from an expert, but there is no evidence cited. The more careful claims I have seen compare Beijing air to something more like one cigarette per day. Here's a typical back-of-the-hand calculation, with cites:
http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/china-public-health/a-day-in-beijing-is-like-smoking-only-one-sixth-of-a-cigarette-its-almost-disappointing/
As someone who has lived (and exercised outdoors) in Beijing, I can assure you that my lungs were in far better shape than those of any two-pack-a-day smoker. The pollution was awful, and is one of the main reasons I'm glad I'm no longer in China, but let's not exaggerate....
I recently read "Lost on Planet China", it's a good read if you want to know more about how bad the pollution in China is.
Perl Programmer for hire
The two big Clean Air Acts were passed in 1970 & 1990, under Nixon and Bush the elder.
The recent chemical plant explosion is a reminder of China's irresponsible culture. The fundamental issue lies in the total lack of respect in human dignity.