Beijing smog ‘red alert’ issued
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
But I'm always amazed by how much emphasis is placed on China in this regard. I try to follow AQI indexes for comparison and India has multiple cities trending over China most of the time. However, news pieces about it are kind of rare...
> Blanketed in acrid smog, Beijing is waking up to climate change
Ok, so if Beijing is having smog because they pollute the air this is now climate change?
Or just the next article linked on that page again:
> The smog is so bad in Beijing that someone made a brick out of it
Actually he used clay for most of the brick, he only collected 100 grams of "smog" during 100 days (4 hours of vacuuming each day) (see http://qz.com/562319/a-chinese-artist-vacuumed-up-beijings-s...)
I'm not saying they don't have a problem with smog but one thing I know is that this kind of journalism is not helping anyone. It is just like everywhere: we tend to get emotional about stuff which doesn't help us to find a solution. It just makes people dislike each other.
So the reporting does not suggest or imply that smog is climate change.
Not sure what Leipzig was like in 86, but if you don't find it objectionable here this week, man, you have iron lungs and a high tolerance for smoke-smelling dusty stuff. :)
On a serious note, the news cycle is over hyping it. But there are some pretty bad days. And this week isn't even close to the worst it has been in Beijing a couple years ago.
PS: 4th year here.
Leipzig back then was unreal. I did a quick search for historical data on SO2 and particulate concentrations but I couldn't find anything. Not only are our environmental standards higher today, so are our expectations about the existence of data!
OK, the air here is by no means good, and it is tragic to mess up something so fundamental to happiness. But things are improving and I bet the air will too.
On a more serious note, I'm sorry to know that there are people forced to live day by day in a high pollution environment though. I hope that the period of health tribute being paid in the name of industrial development won't last too long!
It's funny, for > 99.9% in Beijing, they have no reasonable way to escape, due to family ties, personal financial disruption from having to leave a job/career, etc. But there are many (not only foreigners) who could much more easily uproot and move to another city or another country.
The thing is, you go on hoping it's going to get better over time, and pushing the decision further out, as 'another few months' of this pollution isn't going to make a serious health difference.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/world/asia/the-privileges-...
Is organic non-growth-hormone corn-syrup-free food that is too expensive for the poor a socialist plot?
A couple dozen days a year it gets really bad, worse than this current streak.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/current-and-future-generat...
The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with a 36%
increase in lung cancer per 10 μg/m3 as it can penetrate
deeper into the lungs
An increase in estimated annual exposure to PM 2.5 of
just 5 µg/m3 was linked with a 13% increased risk of heart
attacks.
The level in Beijing right now is 250μg/m3. It maxed at over 360μg/m3 in the past 48 hours.[2]
People are literally being killed by Beijing's air quality as we speak, should we temper our language to not appear biased?
> with a 36% increase in lung cancer per 10 μg/m3 as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs
Observational study. That says everything, it does not account for all variables that have to be taken in account and therefore the effect cannot be isolated.
> An increase in estimated annual exposure to PM 2.5 of just 5 µg/m3 was linked with a 13% increased risk of heart attacks.
Annual exposure. Not standing in the streets for 5 minutes like the article suggests.
Yes, we should temper our language and use Good Science and not Sensationalism.
I was born in Beijing and have been living there for more than two decades. And yes, I feel bad when I was exposed under that environment: I can hardly breathe, I coughed a lot and felt itchy in every inch of my skin. If you think that is not "getting sick", then well, welcome to Beijing.
As a matter of fact, I have, and several times. Don't assume I know nothing of what I am talking about please.
Please show me the stats of lung cancer in Beijing vs other parts of the world. I'd like to see how much the reality stands out vs the assumptions people make.
> If you think that is not "getting sick", then well, welcome to Beijing.
I was not talking about discomfort (that, I have noticed on every trip I did there) but this particular article makes blatant claims with absolutely no data to back them up, which was exactly the point of my post: allegations do not create facts.
Actually, that's understatement. You don't even need to be standing in the street.
Air circulates everywhere, both indoor and out. Sure, you can try and seal your windows, and run air purifiers in your home. But what about when you're at work, or at a restaurant, or any other non-home place?
You can extrapolate linearly such numbers, it makes absolutely no sense. This is not a math class, we are talking about clinical effects with actual thresholds.
Unless you've got some actual conflicting data, it just sounds like you have unfavorable agenda.
So unless proven this linear relationship is valid across all the spectrum (which is obviously is not), then you should take whatever is written with a big grain of salt and thing twice about it before making over simplistic assumptions.
If we are as conservative as we can be and say the increase is only 36% from all of these smog days, that would mean that the rate should increase to 82/100,000.
Beijing's population is ~21 million. The 22 / 100,000 increase from the base rate would mean an additional 5,000 lung cancer deaths in Beijing due to the smog. That's the minimum. The more realistic number is surely an order of magnitude or more higher -- this level of pollution is unprecedented in modern times.
I see assumptions, estimations but no hard facts to support anything, right now.
From 2014:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-02-28/rates-of-lun...
In 2002, for every 100,000 men living in Beijing, 49
had lung cancer. By 2010, that number had risen
more than 50 percent, to 75. Women in China are
less likely to smoke and so have lower rates of the
disease. But among those living in Beijing, a similar
sharp rise in lung cancer cases occurred over the
last decade. In 2002, for every 100,000 women
living in Beijing, 30 had lung cancer; by 2010, that
number had also risen more than 50 percent, to 46.
But at least that's a start for a proper discussion.
And please do not compare a US rate that includes countryside and cities with a city-based rate in China. That's not a relevant comparison at all. Rates vary wildy state by state in the US :
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/statistics/state.htm
As you can see the average in some states go to 90+ in the US.
> The meta-analyses showed a statistically significant association between risk for lung cancer and PM10 (hazard ratio [HR] 1·22 [95% CI 1·03–1·45] per 10 μg/m3). For PM2·5 the HR was 1·18 (0·96–1·46) per 5 μg/m3.
The increase of risk of lung cancer was NOT significant with PM2.5 ratio. Only with PM10.
PM2.5 at 300 is equivalent to 25 cigarettes per day, and has the same associated risks:
1- https://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/07/22/chinas-war-on-p...