Beijing issues first ever red alert for severe air pollution

Heavy smog is seen as people walk on a bridge in Beijing on December 7.

For the first time since new stringent air quality control measures were instituted in March of this year, Beijing has declared a Red Alert, immediately calling for odds/evens traffic restrictions, closures of factories and construction sites, and suggesting the closure of local schools. The alert is the highest in the four-level system put in place to measure air pollution and it is the first time it has been implemented in Beijing.

A red alert warning for air pollution was issued to Beijing residents on Monday afternoon as a blanket of smog covered the city.

Just last week, the city reached Orange Alert for the first time since 2014 and the highest level of alert thus far in 2015, until the current red alert.

Already, cars with even and odd licence plate numbers are allowed to ply on alternating days on Beijing’s roads.

A message posted on the website of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau noted that the alert had been issued to “protect public health and reduce levels of heavy air pollution”.

A red alert means that authorities forecast that there will be more than three days in a row of severe smog.

The unprecedented move to issue the highest alert level comes after the local government was widely criticised for issuing only a lower, orange alert level last week, although levels of PM2.5 – harmful microscopic particles – hit 634 micrograms per cubic m on Dec 1.

Air pollution in Beijing is appaling, but air pollution in areas outside and surrounding the city is said to be more horrific. “With the red alert, primary schools, middle schools and kindergartens will be [advised] to stop having class. This will be very helpful in preventing extra exposure of the most vulnerable group of people to the air pollution hazards”. The World Health Organization has designated the safe level for particles this size to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter. It stayed in effect until a cold front cleared the air.

As world leaders meet in Paris for talks on climate change, the levels in some parts of Beijing last week soared above 600. The state-run Xinhua News Agency carried a picture of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium used in the 2008 Summer Olympics enshrouded in a curtain of gray smog.