A Hazy Shade of Beijing

The world has reached an epoch in conscious environmental thinking. With so much action and awareness going on around the world like the Climate Summit in Paris, there is at last a light in the distance.  This week an article popped up that seems to recur every couple of months or so in the popular science and news websites, about one particular environmental issue:  The smog that envelops Beijing.  

 

Outside the Forbidden City, Beijing.  Photo taken by author during trip to Beijing, 2014

 

A couple of years ago I spent a week in Beijing visiting all the regular tourist spots including the Great Wall of China.  Prior to my departure the news reports were showing images of Beijing cloaked in a dirty grey haze that blocked out the sun and choked people as they went around their everyday lives.  I was nervous heading over.  Did I need a face mask?  Was this environment dangerous to my health?  And would I need to watch the sunrise on the big screen in Tiananmen Square?

I was pleasantly surprised on my drive from the airport to my hotel that it was light, sunny, and more a shade of white than grey.  Nowhere near the extreme images I had seen on the news, and I only saw two people with face masks on during my whole visit.  But there was a distinct haze, high up, shielding the blue sky.  Though it was sunny, you couldn’t see the sun, and it felt like you were in a giant dome of some sort.  Perhaps I was lucky that week to get a lower level of smog than the city endures on other days, but even still, to never see blue sky wasn’t quite right.

The Great Wall of China.  Photo taken by author during trip to Beijing, 2014

 

Smog is a dangerous side-effect of our industrialised world.  A mixture of particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, ozone and water vapour (Conserve Energy Future, n.d.), smog is caused by emissions from cars, factories, and fires.  It has the potential to cause and inflame a number of respiratory ailments, it can cause eye, nose and throat irritation, and sometimes it can lead to death in the elderly and infirmed (Conserve Energy Future, n.d).

According to an article on theguardian.com this week, Beijing had its second “red-alert” this month, with pollution levels recently reaching nearly 15 times the World Health Organisations safe limits (Phillips, 2015).  When the smog reaches the highest levels the city is basically shut down; people are told to stay indoors and businesses, factories and schools are closed.  But the government in China is putting in place a lot of initiatives to curb the rising pollution problems, including strong restrictions on vehicle use, banning of outdoor barbeques and fireworks when pollution is at its peak (Reuters, 2015), and clamping down on factories with fines for over-polluting (Phillips, 2015). It recognises that, in this instance, the people’s health is more important than the economy, and they are doing what’s necessary to protect that.  Not an easy task in a city with a population of 23 million (Phillips, 2015), but let’s hope that one day the Great Wall of China will forever have blue skies above.

REFERENCES:

Conserve Energy Future. (n.d.). How smog is formed?  Retrieved from http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/SmogPollution.php

 

Phillips, T. (2015). Beijing’s ‘airpocalypse’: city shuts down amid three-day smog red alert.  Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/08/beijing-smog-city-shuts-down-amid-red-alert

 

Reuters. (2015). Beijing grinds to halt as second ever ‘red alert’ issued over severe smog.  Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/18/beijing-pollution-second-ever-red-alert-smog-china