Air pollution in Beijing hits hazardous levels
Source: AP
BEIJING (AP) Air pollution in Beijing reached hazardous levels on Saturday as smog engulfed large parts of China despite efforts to clean up the foul air.
At noon, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported the level of the poisonous, tiny articles of PM2.5 at 391 micrograms per cubic meter. The World Health Organization considers the safe level at 25 micrograms per cubic meter of the particulates.
The city has been shroud in gray smog since Friday, reducing visibility to a few hundred meters (yards).
The Ministry of Environmental Protection has forecast severe pollution for the greater Beijing region, the western part of Shandong province and the northern part of Henan province until Tuesday, when strong winds from the north are expected to blow away air pollutants.
FULL story at link.
People wearing face masks walk across Tiananmen Square on a day with poor air quality in Beijing, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2015. Air pollution in Beijing reached hazardous levels on Saturday as smog engulfed large parts of the country despite efforts to clean up the foul air. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0a99e9fa81f14a509d9225a9a897c307/air-pollution-beijing-hits-hazardous-levels
fasttense
(17,301 posts)NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)fasttense
(17,301 posts)I'm not a supporter of Communism but then China has NOT been a Cummunist country since it switched to Capitalism and signed up with Wal Mart as its distribution center.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)The communist party.
houston16revival
(953 posts)I recall a PBS documentary on China in the early 1980s that showed them building dams with
sheer numbers of laborers ... moving dirt shovel to shovel in miles long lines, and telling
us how organized the culture in all aspects.
Unfettered capitalism is rolling along there now.
Response to Omaha Steve (Original post)
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Stuart G
(38,453 posts)many will die of the constant pollution..
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)" strong winds from the north are expected to blow away air pollutants"
Many countries just shove off their crap on the rest of the worlds air and water.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)But Korea is pretty good at creating high levels of pollution. So we not only get some of the pollution from China, but also what is created here. The pollution from China travels over on dust particles called yellow dust. Here is a site that monitors it in Korea:
http://www.korea.amedd.army.mil/webapp/yellowSand/Default.asp
mountain grammy
(26,659 posts)we don't need no regulations.
jomin41
(559 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)'Communist' China is a shining example of unfettered capitalism.
Our oligarchs look to them as their model for our country.
elmac
(4,642 posts)They would do away with the testing, problem solved!
tiptonic
(765 posts)What"s the problem with pollution? Its great for the health care industry. U people r being "un-merican". Wall street would not be pleased if they knew.
Rafale
(291 posts)We will live like that.
musiclawyer
(2,335 posts)Isis can be dealt with. But China is a gigantic toxic waste site. When all the water and soil is poison
( and we are not that far away ) and all the kleptocrats' children have left the country, you will have a billion people on the move, out, permission granted by neighboring countries or not ...
Our relationship with China is so stupid on so many levels that you can only despair if you think about it
Lance23
(17 posts)They use leaded gas and they burn a lot of coal for fuel. So you get this toxic mixture in the air that is worse than anything in the States. When I left Beijing, I thought I would get a break from the air pollution in the countryside, but no-o. Chairman Mao interpreted Marx's dictum to abolish the difference between the country and the city to mean building factories in the boonies. So no matter where you go in China, you are not far from a belching smokestack. I'm sure it's worse today than it was then, but that's hard for me to imagine, because it was so bad 20 years ago.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)are just the West trying to hold Asia back from its destiny: Jakarta and Brasilia also still say that the West denuded everything on their continents, so anything they say is a way to prevent the Third World from catching up; Mao's Seven Child Policy also comes from this sort of thinking ("every mouth comes with a pair of hands"
back in the 50s the Third World (a phrase coined by Sauvy, who thought its problem was not nearly enough people, because he was French and had been traumatized by the 20s' population contraction, when they banned abortion as treason to the state) was completely certain that if you dammed every river, soaked the crops in pesticide, and doubled the population you'd "catch up" by, oh, say 1965
the tremendous failure of this vision of the world gave us creationists, 9-11, ISIS, cartels, and leveled forests
fun stuff
Lance23
(17 posts)It also leads to crises of overproduction, economic depression, and war.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)of figuring that since rich countries have big stadiums ... let's build big stadiums! white elephants show you can afford them!
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)They need to start doing a better job of addressing the problem or their people are going to pay for the lack of regulations.