As a thick blanket of smog enveloped China’s capital, the government issued its highest air-pollution alert of 2015 after a reading for PM 2.5, poisonous particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, spiked to over 600 micrograms per cubic meter in the city, according to a U.S. Embassy monitor.
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Dec 1, 2015- Schools in the Chinese capital Beijing have been ordered to keep children indoors amid extremely high levels of air pollution.
Concentrations of PM2.5, tiny airborne particles that embed deeply in the lungs, peaked at 900 micrograms per cubic meter in southern Beijing, the municipal environment monitoring center said.
Outside Beijing, readings for PM2.5 were was as high as 976 micrograms in the suburban region of Liulihe.
The World Health Organization considers the safe level to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter on a 24-hour average basis.
Smog has shrouded much of northern China including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi and Shaanxi.
Visibility fell to several hundred yards, leaving buildings silhouetted in the haze.
The smog alert in China-coming as world leaders gather in Paris for climate change talks-has forced journalists to appear on camera wearing protective masks.
“This sort of weather, you can see that all of Beijing has been completely enveloped in smog…and for every breath, getting up every morning, your throat will feel particularly uncomfortable”, said Zhang Heng, a 26-year-old architect. 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.
China’s cities, following decades of economic growth and a widespread surge in vehicle ownership, rate among the world’s dirtiest urban areas. Most of the smog and pollution originates from coal-burning plants, which peak during the winter on account of heating households in addition to providing electricity.
Air quality worsened on Friday and deteriorated throughout the weekend. “But I think that they’re hoping that this climate agreement will bring them cleaner air and better environmental conditions across China”.
Forecasters expected winds to clear the smog before Wednesday.
And while the pollution in Beijing is notoriously bad, the past five days have been “dispiriting”, he says.
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Inspectors from the Ministry of Environmental Protection found some construction projects flouted orders Monday to stop work that could raise dust, according to Xinhua.
