In smog-choked China, drivers check out electric cars

Beijing has had a color-coded emergency pollution plan for two years but had never issued a red alert.

Beijing residents are being urged to stay indoors again on Wednesday during the Chinese city’s second day of a smog red alert.

While heavy air pollution remained around 360 in PM2.5 particles in the US Embassy Air Quality Monitor in Beijing, meteorologists have issued warnings for the next bout of smog expected to cover the city from Saturday.

“But, as I say we get a really good combination of quality labour and quality materials that means we come out with a really good quality mask”.

Few in this city of 20 million were unaffected by the alert’s attendant measures: The vast majority of schools, hers included, were closed for the day; construction sites were shut; only cars with even-numbered license plates were allowed on the roads during the day.

“And air purifiers at home are a must”, Beijing resident Sun Yuanyuan said at a downtown Beijing juice shop.

Beijing has just issued its first ever “Red Alert” of risky smog levels, which will see much of China’s capital city shutdown and half of its cars forced off the roads. That’s nearly 10 times the safe level recommended by the World Health Organization, according to the Associated Press.

“I have to watch my child because there is no kindergarten today”.

The ancient Forbidden City palace complex and other Beijing landmarks were lost in a gray, soupy haze on Wednesday.

In Beijing and some northern cities that were severely hit by smog, the rise in orders of condoms went beyond the sales in cities with cleaner air, as people have greater concerns of good childbearing and try to prevent getting pregnant on smoggy days, state-run China Daily reported.

In an editorial the Global Times newspaper said the red alert carried “symbolic significance” but would fail in the short term to vanquish the smog, which is mostly caused by coal-fired power plants.

“I think I have to wear a mask on such severely polluted days, that it should be better than wearing nothing”. “We normally sell 20 to 30 purifiers a month”, he said.

A girl is given oxygen in a respiratory treatment room of a local hospital during heavy smog in Beijing.

China, being the worst air polluter is part of the present talks on carbon emission which are underway in Paris.