Just How Polluted Is China Anyway?

Decades ago, I wrote the first comprehensive books on China’s energy and environment. I have not been surprised by the country’s continuing environmental degradation; even so, I could not have predicted such a deterioration of air quality.

In 2008, the U.S. embassy in Beijing (located in the northeastern part of the city’s downtown area) installed an air quality monitoring device that measures concentrations of airborne particles with diameters of less than 2.5 microns. These tiny particles are the main cause of health problems after long-term exposure, and their monitoring provided a much better appreciation of health risks than the measurement of large (10 microns and above) particles. The Chinese authorities began to release their own measurements of smaller particles only in January 2013, but the tweeting of the hourly concentrations by the American embassy has been a perfect example of subversive information  — although the city’s citizens have always known, without knowing the actual numbers, that they are breathing a grossly polluted air.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/just-how-polluted-is-china-anyway