Sunday Times 2
China’s smog is so bad you can see it from space
China’s deadly pollution has joined its Great Wall and achieved the dubious honour of being seen from space.
Fluffy white clouds over the world’s fastest-growing economy are surrounded by a thick, grey pall of smog in a satellite photograph which lays bare the perilous state of the country’s skies.
People walk through a square during a smoggy day in Jilin (REUTERS)
Released by NASA, the image, taken on a day pollution reached highly dangerous levels earlier this week, shows a dense band swirling 750 miles from Shanghai to Beijing and billowing out across the East China Sea.
Suzhou, which lies a few miles from Shanghai and has more than a million citizens, currently has a composite Air Quality Index (AQI) pollution level of 411. Safe levels are below 50.
In nearby Wuxi, one and a half million citizens are in almost as much danger, with an AQI level of 399.
Chinese authorities announced yesterday that pilots would have to ‘fly blind’ in visibility as poor as 400 metres, to bring an end to catastrophic delays caused by the fog.
Beijing also plans to replace its oil-burning buses with greener models by 2017 to help clear the smog, the state news agency Xinhua
A satellite image shows smog stretching 750 miles from Beijing (top centre) to Shanghai (bottom right). Clouds are white and smog appears as grey swirls (NASA)
said.
Nearly 14,000 new buses powered by electricity or natural gas will be bought to replace two-thirds of Beijing’s bus fleet and halve carbon emissions.
Air pollution in Beijing hit unprecedented levels in January when particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) shot up to a staggering 755 micrograms per cubic litre – 38 times the level recommended by the World Health Organisation.
A few days ago, that figure once again hovered around 400 in Shanghai and Beijing, posing serious risk of cancer and lung diseases to the 26 million people crammed into the two sprawling cities.
The PM2.5 index is around 170 in Shanghai and 92 in Beijing, but these levels are still classed as dangerous to human health – especially for people with conditions like asthma. The World Health Organisation limit is 25.
China’s worsening air quality is a result of it chasing economic growth at all cost in the past 30 years, a pursuit that turned it into the world’s second-biggest economy, but which also poisoned much of its air, water and soil.
Rising public concern over the health dangers of China’s air pollution has worried its stability-obsessed leaders, who fear the issue may become a rallying point for wider dissatisfaction.
© Daily Mail, London