Schools within the Chinese language capital kept college students indoors & parents brought their children to hospitals with respiration ailments Tues.as Beijing grappled with extraordinarily extreme air pollution for the fifth straight day.
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In addition to a PM2.5 filtration system which can filter air, the arena is equipped with higher air pressure to isolate unsafe PM2.5 fine particles outside, China News Service reported.
“You feel light-headed”, says McClatchy News’ Beijing bureau chief Stuart Leavenworth about the thick cloud of smog that’s settled over the city the past five days.
Readings of the tiny poisonous PM2.5 particles reached into the high 600s micrograms per cubic meter through the capital, as compared with the World Health Organization safe level of 25.
The burning of raw coal and industrial emissions are the major sources of pollution in northern parts of China, while emissions from automobiles are the main contributor to Beijing’s smog, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a website statement on Tuesday.
Public anger over air pollution has been a driving force in pushing China to back a possible global climate agreement in Paris.
CHRISTOPHE ENA / POOL/EPA China’s President Xi Jinping (r.) is welcomed by French President Francois Hollande (l.) upon his arrival at the COP21 World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images Tiananmen Square is seen in heavy smog Monday.
Factories are told to cut generation and heavy duty trucks purchased off the roads.
Gao Yang, 35, a teacher who lives in coastal city of Tianjin, said he was trapped in Beijing while on a business trip because of the closed highways. “I will consider moving to Shenzhen” for clean air, said Xiang, who has pharyngitis. He said pollution from surrounding areas also blew into the capital.
“The government is likely to be handling the pollution, so we should find out the results”.
Smartphone air quality apps, popular among residents of Beijing, showed an Air Quality Index (AQI) reading of 500 – the maximum – for nearly all monitoring stations across the city.
Twitter is blocked in the mainland, where pollution is a key cause of discontent with the Communist Party, and Chinese-language reports were more circumspect.
In an interview with the People’s Daily on Tuesday, the ministry said “the winter heating was only the last straw that crushed the air quality”.
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China should strengthen curbs over total coal use to reduce pollutants, said Dong Liansai, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.
