Beijing Students Kept Indoors as Smog Alert Raised

Schools within the Chinese language capital kept college students indoors & parents brought their children to hospitals with respiration ailments Tues.as Beijing grappled with extraordinarily extreme air pollution for the fifth straight day.

“The government is supposed to be tackling the pollution, so we need to see the effects”.

The concentration of PM2.5-particulate matter with diameter of less than 2.5 microns that can penetrate the lungs and harm health reached 945 micrograms per cubic metre in some monitoring stations in southern Beijing.

Air quality index readings surged beyond 500, more than 20 times levels considered safe by the World Health Organisation, on Monday morning, prompting local authorities to issue an “orange alert” requiring factories to shut down or cut production and construction sites to down tools. But the country still depends on coal for more than 60 per cent of its power. For years now Beijing has been suffering from air pollution especially due to massive coal burning in industrial cities up North.

On Tuesday, Beijing schools were ordered to stop outdoor activities.

Power demand has soared due to unusually cold weather in November. For the entire month, the capital saw hardly any blue skies and was shrouded in persistent smog.

Air quality worsened on Friday and deteriorated throughout the weekend.

Campaign group Greenpeace criticised authorities in Beijing for issuing only their second highest alert, behind “red” which would have forced cars of the road.

Conditions were worsened by cold air that trapped pollutants near the ground, according to Zhang, the environment official. Certain sections on a highway outside the capital also had to be closed on account of the lack of visibility, the Transportation Ministry said. “I can do nothing but park my auto at the hotel and wait until the smog goes away”, Gao said.

The city said the levels of hazardous tiny PM2.5 particles in the air exceeded 600 micrograms per cubic meter at several monitoring sites late Monday afternoon.

The smog will continue in most parts of north China on Tuesday and Wednesday, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) forecast. Thick smog has blanketed a 530,000 square kilometre area in northern China – the equivalent of 32 Beijings and more than twice the size of Victoria.