Beijing smog stays despite curbs

The Times of India , Wednesday, December 09, 2015
Correspondent : Saibal Dasgupta
BEIJING: Fang Yang, mother of a four-year-old girl, was among the thousands of Beijing residents who woke up on Tuesday unsure how to respond to the first day of the red alert on air pollution.

Many schools were closed, half the cars in this city of 20 million people were ordered off the roads and hundreds of polluting construction sites and factories around Beijing shut down.

The red alert did not appear to make any difference to air pollution though. The city remained shrouded in a soupy haze and the air quality index (AQI) rose nearly 40% over the level seen on Monday.

The government-owned China Environment Protection Centre reported a real time AQI of 314, when TOI checked in the evening. The US embassy air quality monitoring centre reported a similarly "hazardous" level of PM2.5 at 289 while the AQI was 339.

Measures taken on Tuesday would do little to reduce air pollution, experts said. That's because the government is yet to deal with two other sources of emissions - factories outside Beijing and gigantic coal-fired heating systems.

"I see little hope of air quality improving this winter. How can the government close the heating systems when the city is witnessing extremely low temperatures below 1 degree Celsius?" Wu Jie, a Beijing teacher told TOI.

Beijing's streets wore a deserted look as many office-goers chose to avoid buses and taxis in favour of the subway systems.

The government had issued this highest level of warning on Monday evening to last until Thursday. Barring a few residents who have acquired air purifiers, Beijing residents did not know if it was safer to attend offices or stay at home.

"My daughter's school has effective air purifiers. I have none in my home. So, I sent her to school today," Fang Yang told TOI.

China, which is the world's worst polluter, announced a series of decisions to improve air quality amid the climate change talks in Paris, which is being attended by president Xi Jinping. Nearly two million vehicles were kept off the roads in different parts of the country, the official media said.

In Beijing, vehicles with number plates ending with odd numbers were not allowed to run as the city imposed the odd-even number system for the first time since 2013. It had been imposed for a few weeks in 2013 and for a few months during the Olympic Games in 2008.

The city saw a light drizzle around 11pm provoking questions about whether the government was conducting artificial rains to battle pollution as it has done in the past.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Beijing-smog-stays-despite-curbs/articleshow/50098435.cms
 


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