Air Pollution
Monitoring & Management
in China
How bad was the mist?
Since November 2012, suspending mist lingered for couple of days in both metropolis and second-tier cities one after another throughout China. At the beginning, it did not attracted public attention because foggy weather happens more frequently during winter time as coal remains the primary fuel source in generating heat and energy. Usually, the mist shall dissipate within at most three days. But last year, it retained for nearly a week in Beijing and Shanghai, as similar conditions were found throughout the country. What’s worse, the long lasting mist turned out to be a periodic phenomenon since then. Almost every other week, residents in developed cities would woke up in the morning with illusionary impression of dawn or severe sandstorm when looking out of the window – thick clouds completely blocked the visibility as the building across the street disappeared. The sun couldn’t be seen during day time, except that it lighted the mist into foggy yellow and grey.
ABCNews on Jan 14, 2013
Hazardous Air Quality Forces Beijing Residents Indoors
CNN on Jan 14, 2013
Beijing's Bad Air Quality
What caused the pollution & how serious was it?
It was the joint force of particular weather, fuel emission and specific seasonal condition that attributed to such large scale sustaining air pollution. The encounter of cold air from west with the evenly matched wet warm cloud that entrenched in the eastern area caused continuous mist. During that period, the entire atmosphere was relatively still, with barely any wind at the ground layer. Even if there was indeed a wind, mountains on the northwestern area blocked the way of dissipating the clouds to the low elevation area in which the majority of the populations reside. For that, various pollutants were unable to be dispersed and therein continuously accumulated and intensified in the air. In a plain word, the pollution was literally “trapped”. Besides, increasing usage of motor vehicle, burning coal fuels, industrial emission and constructional dust aggravated the density of pollutants.
The most straightforward way of telling the severity of Beijing’s air pollution is to see its daily reported AQI, which applied the same criteria set by EPA in the U.S.. However, the controversial difference in AQI reader released by local environmental authorities and the air station in U.S. embassy in Beijing once triggered a heated buzz on the internet. The numeric indicator from the U.S. embassy was almost always higher than that of local authorizes, indicating worse air quality. It confused the worried public – which one was correct? What if the result of American monitoring was more accurate, then did it indicate that either the government intended to cover the pollution or the local authority was short of advanced technology? The issue of public trust in regard to government’s legitimacy as well as sustainability would be further discussed in following section.
In fact, discrepancies between the municipal authority’s AQI readers and independent ones were hardly seem to matter in January when both results were astonishingly high. For example on January 12, 2013, the U.S. embassy recorded the index of PM of 886 – the peak record since it started the monitoring in 2007, while the corresponding local reader showed 755. The seemingly large difference was meaningless in face of the AQI standard ranking, which categorizes 300 to 500 as “hazardous” – the most severe bracket. The recently revised EPA standard maxes out at 500. In comparison, the highest reader in the U.S. in the year 2011 was only 153, the average index of Philadelphia was around 50. That is why expert claimed that the hazardous pollution turned people into “instant smoker”. The air quality was indeed, grave.
Sources:
1. Barbara Demick. China hit by extreme air pollution. Los Angeles Times. January 13, 2013. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/13/world/la-fg-china-air-pollution-20130114
2. Clearing the air? Economist. January 14, 2013.
3. Blackest day. Economist. January 14, 2013. http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/01/beijings-air-pollution
• Sensitive groups reported symptoms of eye burning and throat itching when exposed to the atrocious air. The number of patients, especially respiratory and cardiac department, soared dramatically.
• Everyone on the street, even those drove in the car, wore facial masks, which had an unprecedented sky rocketing sale ever.
• Pedestrians walked fast with collar up, hats on and heads down. Pet owners stopped walking their beloved dogs. Cities looked abnormally quiet during the day because almost everyone tried to avoid outdoor activities or if inevitable, managed to shrink the length of it.
• Windows of cars and buildings were covered by thick layer of dust. Air filters turned from snow white to dirt brown after only 24 hours.
• Highways were forced to close, hundreds of thousands of flights were cancelled. Shipping transportation on Yangtze River, running from the most western Tibet province to the most eastern coastal area, was banned due to peculiar dense fog.
• Outdoor sports games, gym classes of schools were all postponed.