Olympic Teams Vying to Defeat Beijing’s Smog: Pollution levels 5 times above WHO safety standards

NYT: Olympic Teams Vying to Defeat Beijing’s Smog
By JULIET MACUR
Published: January 24, 2008


(Oded Balilty/AP)
Heavy pollution engulfs tourists in Tiananmen Square, Beijing last December.

....Randy Wilber....a 53-year-old scientist based here at the United States Olympic Training Center, has spent most of the past two years vying with his counterparts from other nations to devise smarter, safer ways for athletes to face Beijing’s noxious air.

To protect the athletes, Mr. Wilber is encouraging them to train elsewhere and arrive in Beijing at the last possible moment. He is also testing possible Olympians to see if they qualify for an International Olympic Committee exemption to use an asthma inhaler. And, in what may be a controversial recommendation, Mr. Wilber is urging all the athletes to wear specially designed masks over their noses and mouths from the minute they step foot in Beijing until they begin competing....

***

Pollution levels on a typical day in Beijing, some researchers say, are nearly five times above World Health Organization standards for safety. The marathon world-record holder Haile Gebrselassie, who has allergies, and the world’s No. 1 women’s tennis player, Justine Henin, who has asthma, have expressed reservations about competing in the Olympics for fear that pollution will exacerbate their breathing problems.

Some athletes who competed in Olympic test events last year complained that the foul air made it difficult to breathe and caused upper-respiratory infections and nausea. Colby Pearce, 35, an Olympic hopeful in track cycling from Boulder, Colo., said he saw smog floating inside the velodrome in Beijing. His throat became scratchy and he developed bronchitis, he said, because of air pollution. “When you are coughing up black mucus, you have to stop for a second and say: ‘O.K., I get it. This is a really, really bad problem we’re looking at,’ ” he said.

The United States boxing team, while competing in China last month, ran in the hotel hallways instead of on the streets because the air was “disgusting,” said Joe Smith, the team manager.

To combat the problem of air quality, Mr. Wilber and his counterparts from countries with sufficient money have been in silent, clandestine competition, each trying to devise a better plan....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/sports/othersports/24mask.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

They should proclaim China a world health problem and avoid at all cost. And cancel the Olympics.

There was coal dust in the air, but not that fog-like, choking smog. We could see blue skies every day.

The reason?

In 1990, there were almost no cars in Beijing. I'm glad I got to see Beijing in all its bicycle glory, with masses of riders passing through uncontrolled intersection and avoiding collisions as if by sonar. Every few blocks there was a bicycle repair stand on the sidewalk. Beijing is flat and laid out in a grid of broad avenues laced with alleyways, so people of all ages were on those bikes. Most freight seemed to move by pedicab. There were buses and taxis, an occasional scooter, and a few official-looking limousines.

Somewhere in the late 1990s, I began hearing reports that cyclists were banned from certain major thoroughfares because they were "blocking traffic." News footage and feature films set in Beijing showed freeways and streets packed with cars. Industrialization hasn't helped, I'm sure, but most of those industries already existed in 1990.

Now they have air pollution like the "killer smogs" that major U.S. and Western European cities had in the early 1950s.

They should have quit while they were ahead.

But I'm sure they would have said, "You don't control your own cars. You're just trying to keep us under-developed."

When global warming skeptics complain that China and India are not controlling their CO2 emissions, they're right. But these industrializing countries are learning from the U.S., the world's ultimate car-besotted nation, one of the few nations where car ownership is practically compulsory.

as they once were, and won't be again.

I heard one stockpicker on a business show say that he thinks China will have to shut down most of their industry in the Beijing area for a month to meet their commitment to have clear air during the Olympics. He said it could affect world production, since the US is so dependent upon Chinese manufacturing.

I bet that would get rid of more smog than shutting down every factory within 50 miles of Beijing.

Tokyo used to have a horrible smog problem, although it was largely gone when I arrived in 1977. After I noticed that the taxis run on propane, a driver told me that the city government mandated it after they noticed that the skies always cleared up on national holidays. Tokyo not only requires taxis and buses to run on propane but also continues extending its transit lines.