Parents rushed children to hospital with breathing problems as Beijing endured unsafe air pollution levels for a fifth day in a row. Neon signs barely punctured the gloom, and many Beijingers wore masks of various kinds while walking the streets. “It’s the worst day so far this year”, stated Liu Feifie, a 36-year-old mother & Internet company employee.
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She added: “I’m more concerned about the health of my seven-year-old kid”.
It also ordered all construction sites to stop work as well to cut emissions, after issuing an orange alert, the second-highest response to air pollution, the People’s Daily reported.
Outside a packed children’s hospital in downtown Beijing, parents and grandparents complained about the smog’s impact on small children and say the pollution has made their children vulnerable to illnesses such as throat infections and the flu.
Increased use of coal for heating during winter has been the main factor behind surging levels of PM 2.5, airborne particles that measure less than 2.5 microns in diameter and are especially harmful to human health, said the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre said.
“The government is supposed to be tackling the pollution, so we need to see the effects”.
Xi Jinping pledged to cap China’s carbon emissions by 2030 at the climate summit in Paris, but back home millions were being smothered by extreme smog across 31 cities.
Airlines cancelled over 30 flights from Beijing and Shanghai, many to highly polluted Shanxi province, a key coal producer. Certain sections on a highway outside the capital also had to be closed on account of the lack of visibility, the Transportation Ministry said.
The city said the levels of hazardous tiny PM2.5 particles in the air exceeded 600 micrograms per cubic meter at several monitoring sites late Monday afternoon.
By Wednesday, strong cold air moving from west to east is forecast to blow away the air pollutants that have lingered in the north since Friday, said Fang Chong, chief weather forecaster of the Central Meteorological Station.
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Conditions were worsened by cold air that trapped pollutants near the ground, according to Zhang, the environment official. Thick smog has blanketed a 530,000 square kilometre area in northern China – the equivalent of 32 Beijings and more than twice the size of Victoria.
