Severe Beijing smog prompts unusual Gov’t transparency

BEIJING (AP) – One of Beijing’s worst rounds of air pollution kept school children indoors and sent coughing residents to hospitals Monday, but this time something was different about the murky haze: the government’s transparency in talking about it.

While welcomed by residents and environmentalists, Beijing’s new openness about smog also put more pressure on the government to address underlying causes, including a lag in efforts to expand Western-style emissions limits to all of the vehicles in Beijing’s notoriously thick traffic

A woman wears a mask while walking in a park near the China Central Television Tower, background, on a hazy day in Beijing, China, Monday, January 14. Beijing schools kept children indoors and hospitals saw a spike in respiratory cases Monday following a weekend of off-the-charts pollution in China’s smoggy capital, the worst since the government began being more open about air-quality data.AP

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“Really awful. Extremely awful,” Beijing office worker Cindy Lu said of the haze as she walked along a downtown sidewalk. But she added: “Now that we have better information, we know how bad things really are and can protect ourselves and decide whether we want to go out.”

“Before, you just saw the air was bad but didn’t know how bad it really was,” she said.

Even state-run media gave the smog remarkably critical and prominent play. “More suffocating than the haze is the weakness in response,” read the headline of a front-page commentary by the Communist Party-run China Youth Daily.

Government officials – who have played down past periods of heavy smog – held news conferences and posted messages on microblogs discussing the pollution.

The wave of pollution peaked Saturday with off-the-charts levels that shrouded Beijing’s skyscrapers in thick gray haze. Expected to last through Tuesday, it was the severest smog since the government began releasing figures on PM2.5 particles – among the worst pollutants – early last year in response to a public outcry.

A growing Chinese middle class has become increasingly vocal about the quality of the environment, and the public demands for more air quality information were prompted in part by a Twitter feed from the US Embassy that gave hourly PM2.5 readings from the building’s roof.

The Chinese government now issues hourly air quality updates online for more than 70 cities.

“I think there’s been a very big change,” prominent Beijing environmental campaigner Ma Jun said, adding that the government knows it no longer has a monopoly on information about the environment.

“Given the public’s ability to spread this information, especially on social media, the government itself has to make adjustments.”

Air pollution is a major problem in China due to the country’s rapid pace of industrialisation, reliance on coal power, explosive growth in vehicle ownership and disregard for environmental laws, with development often taking priority over health. The pollution typically gets worse in the winter because of an increase in coal burning.

“The pollution has affected large areas, lasted for a long time and is of great density. This is rare for Beijing in recent years,” Zhang Dawei, director of Beijing’s environment monitoring centre, told a news conference Monday.

According to the government monitoring, levels of PM2.5 particles were above 700 microgrammes per cubic metre on Saturday, and declined by Monday to levels around 350 microgrammes – but still way above the World Health Organisation’s safety levels of 25.

In separate monitoring by the US Embassy, levels peaked Saturday at 886 microgrammes – and the air quality was labelled as “beyond index”.

City authorities ordered many factories to scale back emissions and were spraying water at building sites to try to tamp down dust and dirt that worsen the noxious haze.

Schools in several districts were ordered to cancel outdoor flag-raisings and sports classes, and in an unusual public announcement, Beijing authorities advised all residents to “take measures to protect their health”.