Hu Li's heart sank when she realised that she could gauge how
close she was to home by the colour of the air. Driving 140 kilometres
from Tianjin City to Beijing last week, she held her breath as the
chalky-white horizon became a charcoal grey haze. The 39-year-old
businesswoman has lived in Beijing for a decade, and this past month,
she said, brought the worst air
pollution
she has ever seen. It gave her husband a hacking cough and left her
seven-year-old daughter housebound. "I'm working here and my husband's
working here, so we have no choice," she said. "But if we had a choice,
we'd like to escape from Beijing."
A prolonged bout of heavy
pollution over the last month, which returned with a vengeance for a day
last week – called the "airpocalypse" or "airmageddon" by internet
users – has fundamentally changed the way that Chinese people think
about their country's toxic air. The event was worthy of its namesake.
On one day, pollution levels were 30 times higher than levels deemed
safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Flights were cancelled.
Roads were closed. One hospital in east Beijing reported treating more
than 900 children for respiratory issues. Bloomberg found that for most
of January,
Beijing's air was worse than that of an airport smoking lounge.
The
smog's most threatening aspect is its high concentration of PM 2.5 –
particulate matter that is small enough to lodge deep into the lungs and
enter the bloodstream, causing respiratory infections, asthma, lung
cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and possibly
damaging children's development.
The WHO has estimated that outdoor air pollution accounts for two
million deaths per year, 65% of them in Asia. Yet the smog has become
more than a health hazard in
China
– it has become a symbol of widespread dissatisfaction with the
government's growth-first development strategy. Feelings of resigned
helplessness have given way to fear, anger, and society-wide pressure to
change the status quo.
The Lunar New Year, which came last
Sunday, usually coincides with clear blue skies – an estimated 9m cars
depart from the capital, and its emissions-spewing factories shut down
as workers go on holiday. Yet the smog came back with a vengeance on
Wednesday. Environmental authorities sent text messages to Beijing
residents urging them to mitigate the pollution by refraining from the
long-held holiday tradition of lighting fireworks. According to state
media, they took heed. Fireworks sales fell 37% compared with last year.
"PM
2.5 and data measurement issues with regard to air quality have entered
into mainstream Chinese life," said Angel Hsu, a doctoral candidate at
Yale University. Hsu has tracked usage of the term "PM 2.5" on Sina
Weibo, China's most popular microblog, over the last two years. In
January 2011, it was mentioned about 200 times. Last month, the number
soared above three million.
In China, PM 2.5 has acquired a
symbolic weight to parallel its medical gravitas. Young internet users
post photos of themselves wearing air filtration face masks. One popular
mask is hot pink; another looks like a panda bear. Last spring,
Shanghai hosted a PM 2.5-themed rock music festival. A music video
called
"Beijing, Beijing (Big Fog Version)"
went viral on video sharing websites. "Who is searching in the fog? Who
is weeping in the fog? Who is living in the fog? Who is dying in the
fog," A man croons over images of cars crawling along smog-choked
highways.
Experts say that the last month's pollution was probably
caused initially by a cold snap, forcing huge use of coal, followed by a
rare temperature inversion, which trapped emissions under a blanket of
warm air. Others say that it could be related to a prolonged period of
high humidity, trapping particulate matter in the air. Pollution levels
depend heavily on the force and direction of the wind. A strong
north-eastern gust can blow the smog out to sea; a few stagnant hours
are enough to make noon look like early evening.
The standard
international measurement for air quality – the US Air Quality Index, or
AQI – rates air quality on a scale of zero to 500. With experience, it
becomes possible to guess the AQI in Beijing without looking at official
readings. One hundred correlates to a thin grey gauze hovering above
the horizon. When the index hits 200, the sky is visible only in a small
patch directly overhead. An AQI reading of 300 blots out the sun,
smothering the city in drab uniformity. When the AQI reached 755 on
12 January, the worst day on record, the air felt like industrial smoke –
chemical-tasting, eye-watering.
On particularly smoggy days, the
toxic cloud is visible in satellite photos. The worst of the last
month's pollution stretched 1,100 miles south, closing highways near the
south-western city Guiyang. When the smog clears, it doesn't simply
vanish, but instead drifts to surrounding countries. January's smog
spurred Japanese authorities to release health warnings to people living
in the country's western cities. Traces of China's smog have been
detected as far afield as California.
The Beijing municipal
government has taken steps to curb the pollution, temporarily shutting
down factories and ordering government cars off the roads. While
propaganda authorities used to quash reports of air pollution for fear
that they could spark social unrest, Chinese newspapers were allowed to
report freely on the crisis. Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau
has designed a cartoon accompaniment to its AQI readings – a pigtailed
girl with big anime-style eyes, green-haired and smiling when the index
reads "excellent" but maroon-haired and weepy when smog rolls in.
"I'm
pretty optimistic that this happened at the right time to prompt the
most action possible," said Deborah Seligsohn, an expert on China's
environment at University of California, San Diego. President Xi Jinping
took the reins of the Communist party in November; incoming prime
minister Li Keqiang has promised to make environmental protection a
focus of his tenure. Beijing authorities hope to wean the city off coal
and implement stricter vehicle emissions standards by 2016.
Seligsohn
added that changes would take a while. "If Beijing were surrounded by
cities that were doing the same thing that Beijing was doing, it would
be fine, but it isn't," she said. A short drive from central Beijing,
the landscape fans out into sprawling, dusty plains, where farmers burn
coal to heat their concrete homes. Small factories there often escape
the notice of environmental watchdogs. PM 2.5, she explained, is
produced by four airborne pollutants – sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides,
volatile organic compounds, and black carbon – each of which would
require its own slew of regulations to curb.
People have begun to
take protection into their own hands. "People are starting to treat air
purifiers as a necessary appliance like a washing machine or computer,"
said Bi Xiuyan, a 56-year-old product salesperson for Amway. Bi has sold
about 50 air purifiers in the last month, each of which costs £960,
about twice the average monthly income for Beijing residents. "Everybody
needs to breathe," she said.
Louie Cheng, the president of
Shanghai-based Pure Living China, a small company that tests indoor
air pollution, said that the current situation boosted the company's web
traffic 30-fold. "Literally you can see it – this isn't compared with a
year ago, this is compared with a month ago," he said. Cheng said that
he helped start the company three years ago when an expat friend with an
asthmatic daughter couldn't find a local company to competently test
his house for pollutants. His client-base has tripled since January, and
now includes more than half of Shanghai and Beijing's international
schools. "It's just hard to keep up with the demand," he said.
Awareness
of the problem has spread beyond major urban centres. Ma Shiying, who
sells moist towelettes in the small coastal city of Weifang, Shandong
province, heeded the government's warning and lit fewer fireworks this
year. "Over the past few months, the whole world has begun to pay close
attention to this problem," he said. "It's become impossible for anyone
to ignore."
Yet interpretations of the issue vary. Eva Zhong, the
head of exports for a fireworks manufacturer in Hunan province, said
that the government's fireworks warnings were misplaced. "Fireworks are
very innocent," she said. "Car exhaust is a far greater problem."
Despite the government figures, she added, her company's sales this year have been unscathed.
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