Beijing declares red alert amid prolonged smog

China’s capital city of Beijing today issued a red alert, warning that the city which is home to over 22 million people, faced its worst ever smog.

The state news agency Xinhua reported that the city’s air is thick with smog and the skyline is obscured by the haze.

During a red alert, kindergarteners, primary and high schools are recommended to not hold classes, according to the city’s emergency management headquarters.

The highest level of the four-tier alert indicates a severe air pollution problem is expected to last at least three days. Many took to the Internet to criticize the local authorities for not issuing the red alert last week, when the air pollution was also reaching hazardous levels, according to Reuters.

Yesterday China’s weather observatory issued a yellow alert for smog that will cover the country’s northern regions and asked schools to keep the children not let them outdoors to avoid exposure to heavy smog.

Per the BBC, the U.S. Embassy’s air pollution monitor showed that PM2.5 levels were 10 times above the healthy limit on Monday. The World Health Organisation “safe level” for PM 2.5 is 25.

Some industrial plants and construction sites were told to pause operations.

According to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center, the alert has been put on until Thursday as it is expected to disperse later that afternoon as a cold front arrives.

It is the second time this month that notoriously polluted Beijing has experienced a prolonged bout of smog, sending PM2.5 levels in the suburbs as high as 976 micrograms per cubic metre last week.

Red alerts have been issued in other Chinese cities before, such as Shenyang.

Auto use is being halved by allowing only odd or even numbered license plates on the road at one time and heavy vehicles including garbage trucks are banned from the streets.

Despite smog levels now being lower than they have been in recent weeks, authorities have announced that an extreme amount of pollution is to hit the city in the coming days.

A major source of unrest around the country has been the pollution, Chinese researchers have identified.

The Chinese government is vowing to do more to fight air pollution, but faces questions about how it plans to do that in concrete terms.