Beijing’s authorities ordered limits on cars, factories and construction sites for three days during a red alert for smog starting Tuesday.
Advertisement
Sales of face masks and air purifiers have risen in tandem with pollution levels in Beijing, which remained at hazardous levels in many parts of the capital yesterday.
Beijing imposed its first red-alert the highest on a four-color scale that has been in use for two years following a forecast of high pollution for three consecutive days. “But I doubt if it actually works”, she said.
While heavy air pollution remained around 360 in PM2.5 particles in the US Embassy Air Quality Monitor in Beijing, meteorologists have issued warnings for the next bout of smog expected to cover the city from Saturday.
Discussions with China began in January, but news of the loans comes the same week that the capital issued its first air pollution “red alert”, banning heavy vehicles, restricting the number of cars on the road, advising schools to cancel classes, and requiring outdoor construction to stop.
Customs officers in China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, have discovered 120,000 fake respiratory masks, supposedly made by US diversified manufacturer 3M Co, state media said on Wednesday.
According to Beijing’s emergency response system for air quality, a red alert is the highest level of concern.
Some Beijingers have left the city altogether, taking advantage of the school closures to fly to cleaner destinations, such as the southern city of Kunming at the foot of the Tibetan Plateau.
It has persisted despite the Chinese government’s stated priority of cleaning up the legacy of pollution left from years of full-tilt economic growth.
Most of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the burning of coal for electricity and heating – particularly when demand peaks in winter – which is also the key cause of smog.
Advertisement
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. 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.
