The city will ask some factories to suspend or limit production and construction sites to stop transporting materials and waste while the orange alert is active, it said.
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On Monday, concentrations of airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, or PM2.5, peaked at 900 micrograms per cubic meter in southern Beijing.
Outside Beijing, readings for PM2.5 were was as high as 976 micrograms in the suburban region of Liulihe.
The World Health Organization’s recommended maximum is 25 microgram per cubic meter. Last October, runners in the Beijing marathon had to wear masks due to the high levels of pollution.
It’s not an easy time to report from Beijing, where smog has reached levels 17 times worse than the level deemed “hazardous”.
As the Cop21 opens in Paris, northern China on Monday experienced a thick fog of pollution with a record density for the year 2015.
But the government has yet to issue any official warnings and thirty thousand half marathon runners struggled through this weekend, when pollutions levels were just as high. Multiple flights into the capital’s second airport were cancelled, an airline said, with the city’s main air hub adding more than 50 planes could not take off.
But despite seven years of effort, experts say that Baoding will need to bite the bullet by targeting important economic pillars, such as steel and cement plants, vehicle manufacturing and even the low-tech recycling sector if air quality is to be substantially improved. China formed a five-year plan to cut pollutants in 2010, which involved shrinking levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and ammonia nitrogen in the air.
“Humidity and a lack of wind… mean the smog will linger for another two days, before a cold front arrives on Wednesday”, Xinhua reported.
An orange smog alert, first issued on Sunday, remained in place yesterday, closing highways in nine cities, including the provincial capital Shijiazhuang, Hebei traffic police said.
He, however, said a substantial improvement of the environment will only be possible if pollution is reduced by a further 30 to 50 per cent. The Urban Air mobile app is used three million times per day by users in China, Zheng said.
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Most emissions come from coal burning which spikes in winter along with demand for heating, which also causes smog.
