Beijingers make fashion statements with smog masks

The warning was the first time Beijing has raised the “red alert” since emergency air pollution plans were introduced two years ago, although levels of pollution have been much higher in the past.

A grey soupy haze subsumed Beijing’s unique landmarks, convenience stores sold air-filtering masks at brisk rates and health-food stores promoted pear juice as a traditional Chinese tonic for the lungs.

“This is modern life for Beijing people”.

By placing his brick into a construction site, he says he wants it to represent “the brick disappear[ing] into the concrete jungle, just like putting a drop of water in the ocean”. However, Beijing’s education commission later followed up with a separate order for schools to close during the three-day alert. School children are told to stay at home. “Even when wearing the mask, I feel uncomfortable and don’t have any energy”.

“Construction waste, excavation transport vehicles, cement trucks, gravel transport vehicles and other large-scale vehicles are prohibited from driving on roads”, authorities said in the notice.

In Beijing, hundreds of extra buses and dozens of extra subway trains were added to accommodate those forbidden to drive, as the city labored in the brownish air with no wind to blow it away. The city was also shrouded in smog for most of November, when power demand soared due to unusually cold weather.

Northern and eastern China have been choking under heavy smog for most of this week, and an orange alert for air pollution remained in force for the eastern province of Shanxi on Tuesday. A forecast for even more severe pollution expected to last for a shorter period would not trigger such an alert.

The “red alert” announcement, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that things are much worse than they have been.

Some polluting enterprises, including a stone processing factory and several clothing workshops, continued to operate on Tuesday after a red alert, the highest level, was issued in the morning.

Air pollution can also cause other diseases, some of which can be fatal, according to the World Health Organization. The US embassy air quality monitoring centre reported a similarly “hazardous” level of PM2.5 at 289 while the AQI was 339.

China’s polluted air has had severe health effects. A study conducted by atmospheric chemist Jos Lelieveld of Germany’s Max Planck Institute was published in Nature magazine this year revealed that more than 1.4 billion people die premature death because of pollution in China every year. China is the world’s biggest carbon polluter; however, the country is determined to promote low carbon economy and create a global green network.