On Thursday, some residents of Beijing woke up with splitting headaches. A curtain of haze had fallen across the city of more than 20 million. It was the first “airpocalypse” of the year in the Chinese capital and nearby provinces, and it had come appropriately enough one year after a similar event had led to widespread anxiety.
“How does the smog differ from the apocalypse?” Joe Wong, a comedian from northeast China, wrote on his microblog on Wednesday night, when the pollution levels had begun surging. “After the apocalypse, you no longer worry about the smog.”
On Wednesday night, the United States Embassy in Beijing began sending out online warnings that the air quality level had gone above 500, the upper limit of the measurement scale, and was now “beyond index” (or “crazy bad,” as one embassy employee had written on an official embassy Twitter account several years ago.) It stayed at that level until Thursday, when it dipped to “hazardous” from “beyond index.” Hazardous means an air quality index above 300, at which point the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air is many times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health Organization. American health officials say a hazardous rating means people should avoid venturing outdoors.
Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Chinese officials had ordered the closing of some highways, and visibility in some parts of Beijing was expected to drop to 500 meters. The municipal government issued a yellow smog alert at 7 a.m. “The smog is forecast to last until Friday morning,” Xinhua reported.
The four major highways closed were those from Beijing to Shanghai, Daqing to Guangzhou, Beijing to Harbin and Beijing to Pinggu.
The relentless pollution in Chinese cities has had other economic effects. China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, reported on Monday that there was a severe drop in tourism in Beijing last year, in part because of pollution. From January to November in 2013, the city had 4.2 million visitors, down 10.3 percent from the same period in 2012, China Daily reported, citing statistics from the Beijing Tourism Development Commission.
The report said the commission blamed the pollution, the weak global economy and a strong renminbi.
Some researchers have concluded that air pollution shortens lifespans considerably. One recent study said outdoor air pollution in China contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010. Another study showed that residents in one part of northern China had lived five years less on the average than residents in southern China because of pollutants from extensive coal burning for winter central heating in the north.
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