Smog has been a public health concern in Beijing for years but the government’s response has drawn scrutiny in the past week, following criticism that it did not issue a red alert during an earlier episode of hazardous smog.
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The mayor had signed a document outlining problems with the city’s preparedness for smog emergencies, it said. Over the worst of the bad air days it’s common to see much less activity out on the streets, and for those who are walking or biking around to wear face masks that help alleviate the intake of bad air.
In fact, during a red alert half of the city’s cars are banned from the roads; those odd and even-numbered license plates alternate days when they may join traffic.
“We don’t have air filter at home”.
“The measures ask too much from drivers because the primary factor leading to the smog is not vehicles”, he continued.
China placed Beijing on a mandatory pollution red alert, closing schools and minimizing construction due to extreme smog affecting the air quality in the heavily-populated capital. Convenience stores sold air-filtering masks at brisk rates, and health-food stores promoted pear juice as a traditional Chinese tonic for the lungs.
That indicated that the traffic restrictions were effective but more work needs to be done to reduce emissions from coal burning, said Chai.
When the U.S. Embassy in Beijing began issuing pollution readings several years ago, Chinese state media – and many ordinary Chinese – accused Ambassador Gary Locke of “meddling” in the nation’s internal affairs or seeking to embarrass the Communist Party.
Coal is responsible for around 75 percent of power generation in China, though the government has said it would cut power sector emissions by 60 percent by 2020.
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The spike in air pollution has created opportunities for China’s notorious counterfeiters. The air quality in China is routinely so bad, that one artist even decided to make a statement by vacuuming the air for 100 days and forming a brick out of the particles he captured. Shanghai’s city government said in a statement Wednesday that more than 970,000 fake 3M-branded masks and two production machines with a total value of 10.3 million yuan ($1.6 million) were seized in a police operation in the city last month.
