Its Air Experiment Failing, Beijing Considers "Emergency" Plan
by Alex Pasternack, New York, NY 
on 07.28.08
Image over the Forbidden City, July 28, 2008. Source: Reuters
Beijing's big air cleanse began a week ago, and the results are clear (or not, as it were): closing some factories and taking half its cars off the roads has not kept away the smog. Last week officials downplayed concerns but after a depressing weekend of soupy air and low visibility, the government is now considering what China Daily calls an "emergency green plan" for the Olympics: 90 per cent of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles could be kept off the roads and more factories could face temporary closure.
The announcement came on the same day that Greenpeace issued a report on Beijing's greening operations, and said the smog would be dangerous for athletes. To qualify as a "blue sky day," which Beijing says is safe for athletes, the Air Pollution Index, which typically measures small particulate matter, or PM10, must be below 101. For the past few days, as you can see in the chart below, it's been higher than that; today it was 113. (Strangely, at the moment the Ministry of Environmental Protection's site's latest data is from last week, but more recent data can be found at this site and at the Wall Street Journal's widget). But even if Beijing can reach 100 and below for the big event -- and it will do whatever it can to get there -- even that won't be enough.
Courtesy BeijingAirBlog
Beijing's pollution monitoring system has come under fire for being misleading, whether it's because of its nomenclature ("blue sky day" doesn't mean blue skies, and "fog" or "haze" doesn't mean smog) or the location of its sampling stations. But calling Beijing's average API of 100 acceptable seems just egregiously wrong. That's 6.5 times the World Health Organization guideline for long term exposure. As the WHO wrote (pdf) in 2005,
a PM10 concentration of 150 μg/m3 [equal to an API of 100] would be expected to translate into roughly a 5% increase in daily mortality, an impact that would be of significant concern, and one for which immediate mitigation actions would be recommended.
And as a public health professor noted at BeijingAirBlog, "anything above Chinese API=50 is very unhealthy. Even if it is at API=50, that is still more than double New York City usual levels, so that is not acceptable either. They really need to get the API down to 25 or below to call the air acceptable for Olympic competition."
Because athlete's will be ingesting more air than an average person during endurance events, the hazard for them is even greater. The IOC chief said that some outdoor events may need to be rescheudled, and today Australia's Olympic Committee said today that its athletes would be allowed to drop out of events if they were concerned about air quality.
Though reports said that the car measures had reduced emissions by 20 percent, Beijing's air suffers in part from the city's location, stuck inside a "bowl" formed by mountains to the north that help to trap pollution.
What Beijing needs most of all for its grand air experiment to look like a success are rainfalls and strong clean winds. The former is something the government already has some control over, and which it expects more of in the coming days. But winds, which are more important, are one of the factors for which Beijing has no control. Not yet at least.
Sources
The Beijinger: Emergency Air Quality Measures
BeijingAirBlog
Ministry of Environmental Protection
Beijing Envrionmental Protection Bureau Olympic page
Also on TH:
For the Olympics, Will Beijing Paint the Town Green?
Beijing's Latest Olympic Crackdown: Recyclers
Beijing's Olympic Subways Outpace US Subways
Will Beijing Continue Down Its Environmental Path?
Photo: Reuters
Graph: BeijingAirBlog
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Eww, it's like you can chew their air.
they need a giant fan or something to create wind to cycle fresh air into the valley...
Don't like the results? Change the parameters. Who says the East can't learn from the West! Another triumph of planned economy; planned data...
I was in beijing in the summer of 2002 (which for china is eons ago) and the air was so smoggy that you couldn't see the sun at midday. couldn't even tell where it might be in the sky.
i can only imagine things have gotten worse.
i was never a fan of giving the chinese the olympics, and this abject failure to address a long-held concern only solidifies my position. the games should not hold a city's population at home, out of work, unable to travel, and unable to collect a paycheck because their employer was forced to shutdown for a month.
This could be any city in North America today if it weren't for the environmentalists--so often ridiculed--who decades ago raised public awareness and campaigned for policy solutions of government. Everytime I read a sneering comment from someone who believes human induced climate change is a myth, I have to ask, 'what if you're wrong?' On the other hand, what's the downside to the possibility that human induced climate change IS true and we should be taking action?: a cleaner planet in the future? Better than a world that resembles Beijing on a sunny day.
Cutting the pollution you put in the air isn't going to make the pollution already in the air from years of neglect suddenly go away. Fine particulate matter takes much longer than a couple of weeks to settle out.
So much for their welcome song urging people to come to Beijing to breathe the air
.
Beijing welcomes you video, with subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skan0yO-qU8
Watch it; it's tragically ironic.
The air is a little clearer today and the rain should help ease the problem. Here are some pics from my apartment:
http://2008gamesbeijing.com/a-little-cooler-and-clearer-in-beijing-threat-of-rain/
I love how everybody is complaining about the air in Beijing. "Oh my god, what a dirty city. I can't believe athletes have to go there." Does anybody realize why it is dirty? It's because of all the cheap crap that you buy. The clothes that most of the athletes are wearing are probably made in Beijing. Don't blame the Chinese for this, or think it's too bad that western athletes have to put up with this pollution.
It's too bad that we've made the Chinese have to put up with the pollution (let alone human rights abuses), and will have to keep putting up with it after the Olympics are over. Maybe the west could try to learn from this instead of pointing the finger.
And Nero42, are you on the Olympic committee? "The Chinese"? How are "they" different from you?
strangely enough, i never made any comparison between "us" and "them"
and if anything, i was being sympathetic to the plight of the average beijinger (?). the air over there sucks, so the chinese gov't is keeping people from working for 4 weeks to hold the games. they can't get in their cars, their factories are shutdown, their construction sites are idled, etc..
my position is that the games shouldn't be held in a city where holding them neccessitates keeping the local population hostage and unable to live their lives.