
Schoolchildren ordered indoors as air pollution cloaks Shanghai - ck2
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/06/schoolchildren-air-pollution-shanghai-eastern-china
======
Sharlin
I wonder how this compares to the worst smogs experienced in London and
elsewhere before the West got its act together with regard to particulate
pollution. Apparently the Great Smog of 1952 _killed_ on the order of 10000
people in just a few days. I'm not sure many young people nowadays realize how
horrible the situation was just half a century ago.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952)

~~~
saalweachter
It really irks me whenever there's a talk about nuclear energy. Nuclear power
may have its own set of challenges, but coming from the baseline of _coal_
it's hard to do worse.

~~~
dreamfactory
As far as I know, no coal plants have ever resulted in a Chernobyl-scale
effect.

~~~
YokoZar
Chernobyl is estimated to have a combined death toll of somewhat less than a
thousand people over their lifetimes.

Coal power plants kill ten times as many people every year when functioning as
designed.

~~~
yodsanklai
I think that even coal mining kills thousands of people every year.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident)

------
johnzim
I grew up in Hong Kong. It didn't have the cleanest air in the world but I
lived in relative good health. After I left for university I heard things were
getting worse and worse although I remained sceptical.

When I returned for work, the air was nowhere near as bad as it is on the
mainland now but I simply couldn't survive it. Every day my lungs constricted
within minutes (I have asthma.) I realised I could never return to live in my
home city as I had intended to.

I was not angered by the existence of the pollution. Things change and China
grows on the mainland. What I was angered by was the fact that after the
handover, the government was so cowed by their new CCP masters that they
wouldn't even tell the truth about the air pollution. You will never hear an
HK official admit that the pollution comes from China, yet every single adult
citizen who grew up in the city remembers what life was like 15-20 years ago.

China ostensibly has anti-pollution laws. The CCP's colossal corruption keeps
them from ever being enforced and entire cities, my hometown amongst them, are
now literally poisonous to live in.

~~~
da02
Was it possible for you to breathe the air in the surrounding areas? (Lantau,
Macau, etc)

~~~
johnzim
Last time I was back in April of this year, Lantau was a little better but
realistically still not good enough to consider living there, much less
bringing up kids. I ended up feeling out of breath crossing the road.

I haven't been back to Macau since I was a kid though, so it looks very
different now (Thanks to Mr Ho.)

My grandfather grew up in HK too. He passed away last summer, struck down by a
rather horrible respiratory based cancer. However, I'm wary of too much
confirmation bias in attributing that to the pollution too. It'll be
interesting to see what the respiratory disease numbers are like in the coming
decades.

~~~
da02
Thanks for the info. My condolences for your home land and family.

------
kibwen
For historical reference, here are some breathtaking photos of mid-century
Pittsburgh:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2155742/Hell-lid-
tak...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2155742/Hell-lid-taken-The-
pictures-bygone-Pittsburgh-residents-choking-clouds-smog.html)

I wonder if anyone can cite a source for one of the claims made in the
article:

 _" Also lots of people thought that high smoke output was a sign of high
productivity and that coal smoke was good for the lungs and helped crops
grow."_

~~~
huxley
If you've lived near farms, pulp-n-paper mills or fish processing plants, you
will often be told that the stink is the smell of money and you should stop
complaining. I expect it was something similar.

~~~
mikestew
As I would tell my father as we passed a pig farm, "yeah, but it's not the
smell of _my_ money."

------
JonSkeptic
I've seen sci-fi depictions of over-industrialized mega-city scapes, but I
never thought I'd actually get to see a picture of one. To call that surreal
is an understatement.

~~~
aspensmonster
I guess we didn't have to wait until November 2019.

But at least we have "cheap" consumer goods!

~~~
icebraining
And Chinese workers have stuff like food.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduct...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduction)

~~~
Houshalter
We could just give people food without having to make stuff for us in return.
The world does not have a food shortage.

~~~
sliverstorm
That fosters dependence issues.

~~~
dreamfactory
What does that even mean? Who is dependent on what in that scenario?

~~~
sliverstorm
The people receiving food stop working to secure food on their own. They grow
entitled, and _expect_ food aid.

It's an observed phenomenon in Africa.

~~~
dreamfactory
Wasn't that the whole idea - for them to stop producing and polluting the
planet? That giving them food would be cheaper. Of course it would threaten
our dependence on cheap clothes and expensive gadgets.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's not a socially stable option. Not because we want cheap gadgets, but
because of the social imbalance.

Also from an ethical point of view, it's not very fair to deny them the chance
to become a developed nation.

~~~
dreamfactory
People don't sit around on their bums for too long - it's just not in our
nature. If they weren't slaving away in factories they might end up as a
society that primarily produces cultural capital (huge social stability there)
or they might develop a service-based economy. In the wider scheme, Chinese
manufacturing is probably more important to the west than China.

~~~
sliverstorm
How important Chinese manufacturing is to China has little to do with the
ramifications of perennially feeding a country for nothing.

------
jkimmel
Is there a level of public outcry regarding the pollution?

I realize that criticism may be somewhat muted given the nature of the PRC
government, but I can't imagine a city as large and cosmopolitan as Shanghai
merely accepting this level of environmental mismanagement. Unfortunately,
articles regarding Beijing/Shanghai pollution usually fail to mention public
sentiment above the level of brief individual anecdote ("It's hard to breath
on the way to the office" \- Chinese citizen, etc.).

Perhaps someone local could provide some insight?

~~~
dylandrop
I mean, the problem is that there's a bit of a cultural difference between
Americans circa-Industrial Revolution, and the Chinese now. So saying that the
Chinese will stand up and protest isn't necessarily true. I don't want to
speak for all Chinese, but from what I've read -- please correct me if I'm
wrong -- is that there is more of a culture of deference to authority in
China. Compare this to Americans, who have a history and pride in rebelling
against authority. Now, you might point to China's communist revolution, but
realize that with this government came the need for them to propagandize and
popularize a love and respect for the government in control, much more so than
in the U.S. So back to my original point, protest culture isn't as much of a
thing there as it is here, because there's more of a sense of working for the
collective good (economic growth of China).

So I'm hoping that there will by outcry, but I think it is unfortunately less
likely than it would be in the U.S. due to Chinese culture. I'd also like to
here some local insight as well, and I hope I'm proved wrong because it would
be awesome if there was a public outcry.

~~~
rz2k
There are astonishing numbers of protests in China every year.[1][2] I also
think the culture for factory workers during the industrial revolution was one
of deference to authority, and that it took extreme conditions to spur them to
protest their conditions.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_the_Peop...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/02/rising-
protests-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/02/rising-protests-in-
china/100247/)

~~~
dylandrop
That's good to hear. My only point about protesting in America was that it's
very ingrained in our culture to protest, even for small issues. I didn't
really know much about Chinese protesting culture, but it's good to hear they
do it in large numbers.

~~~
dreamfactory
As far as I understand, public unrest is one of the greatest fears of Chinese
leadership, hence tight control and censorship. That may speak volumes about
the willingness of their public to take control along with protesting (as
opposed to the West where protest is seen as a safety valve and therefore
encouraged in proscribed forms).

~~~
dylandrop
Well, I hope that's true, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the
idea "they have an oppressive government thus they must be able to take
control with protesting". It could be that the government feels the need to be
this way because they know just how screwed up everything (pollution,
persecution, etc.) is, and are oppressive as a safety measure.

~~~
dreamfactory
...think that's what I said - the oppression is a response to perception of a
greater evil of instability. Scratch any country's leadership and you'll get
the same kind of result. The question is whether that is justified, and
historically seems to be more usually a case of paranoia, micro-management,
and control freakery.

------
ChuckMcM
I see this as a difficult to fake signal that China's economic growth is more
real than some folks in the West would like to believe. It is similar to the
challenges faced by industrial cities in the West as they exploited the
massive production capacities created during WW II. Generally the reasoning
goes, high pollution from lots of power plants / factories is a function of
production of those power plants / factories.

You can fake GDP numbers but its not as straight forward to fake this sort of
environment.

That said, it would be unfortunate if China doesn't get their act in gear soon
and start putting scrubbers on plants and cleaning up their act here.

~~~
beachstartup
> China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like
> to believe

i know that people in general are racist against the chinese for all sorts of
reasons, but this is the first time i've heard this one.

does anyone actually doubt china's economic growth? i mean all you have to do
is go there and see it. (granted, very, very few 'experts' on china have ever
actually been there)

~~~
ChuckMcM
It isn't racism. This link provides a useful summary of the question :
[http://ineteconomics.org/china-economics-seminar-0/short-
his...](http://ineteconomics.org/china-economics-seminar-0/short-history-
china-s-doubtful-gdp)

The global interest in China's _actual_ GDP on a comparative scale is to help
estimate things like their future consumption of natural resources, their
threat to global stability, and to evaluate global recessions/growth more
accurately.

The problem with "seeing it" is differentiating what you are seeing with what
is. So for example a city in the US that has a lot of large buildings being
built is a clear sign of economic growth because the market dynamics are
structured so that people don't build buildings unless they believe they can
rent them out profitably, so they 'lead' in the sense there is demand for that
space, they go up, it gets rented, and now there are a bunch of new jobs in
the city which brings in workers with wages etc etc etc.

But in China there are buildings that were built simply because the government
said "Build a building." There are buildings that are totally empty (see this
link [http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-
dy...](http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-
dystopian-m-1238731420) which has some fascinating pictures).

So people don't trust the economic statistics the government produces and seek
out other ways of either confirming or denying what is said. Energy
consumption is one such indicator which, when combined with a technology
sophistication index, can provide another data point on China's economic
strength.

~~~
tokenadult
As comments to your first comment have already pointed out, pollution per unit
of primary energy produced in power plants can vary wildly among different
parts of the world. Yes, we know that China is putting up a lot of buildings.
We know that China has huge amounts of air pollution. We don't know if China
would be doing either of those things to the same degree if China had a freer
market and more effective rule of law. That's why observers like me think that
China could still stagnate at its current level of economic development, and
lose the growth magic that it (undeniably) has enjoyed during most of our
adult lives.

------
ck2
Unbelievable [http://i.imgur.com/lef99jm.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/lef99jm.jpg)

Has to take years off your life to be breathing that.

~~~
yk
The sky above the port was the color of a TV, switched to a dead channel.

~~~
mortenjorck
There's always Beijing:
[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/\--W3r4NvkHFg/UPpFQzRcNWI/AAAAAAAACB...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--W3r4NvkHFg/UPpFQzRcNWI/AAAAAAAACBA/WKYACvJJyvM/s1600/tumblr_mgn3ngzM7y1qzprlbo1_1280.png)

~~~
babesh
Looks like a shot from Blade Runner.

------
haosdent
I am Chinese. The whole China are suffer from air pollution, not noly
Shanghai.

------
mathattack
I remember visiting Shanghai about 10 years ago. It was very vibrant and
exciting, and there were cranes everywhere. I thought, "This is like being on
the ground floor of a great new metropolis. Wouldn't it be awesome to work
here?" I'm glad that things didn't work out that way. There are health
consequences for such massive pollution.

------
dlundqvist
Yeah, today was not a great day to be here. We contemplated not letting our
children go outside, but eventually sent them to school.

------
crazygringo
Curious... from a cancer-risk standpoint, this is the equivalent of smoking
how many cigarettes that day?

One? Ten? A pack? Two packs? Fifty packs?

Or do we not have enough data to even guess?

------
biesnecker
Sad. I love -- _love_ -- that city, but I could never live there again, not
breathing that.

~~~
matthewrudy
and the price of international schools for your kids, right?

~~~
davepage
If cost is a primary concern, the kids can go to local school (just like
Chinese kids who come to the US). The expat continuum goes from 'bubble' to
'going native'. Bubble is most expensive. Might as well stay home, no?

~~~
thaumasiotes
They can? Even local chinese kids without 户口 can't go to local schools, to
hear them tell it. That was one of the primary reasons students came to the
school where I worked in 2010-11.

~~~
davepage
No first hand experience, but from what I can tell, children of legitimate Z
visa holders can send their kids to local schools for a reasonable fee. See
shanghaiexpat.

It is also legal for expats to home school their kids (not legal for the
locals).

There is a strong sense of entitlement present in American culture which leads
to unrealistic expectations when living abroad. This manifests as the so-
called 'ugly American'. China is a place where 'zero-tolerance' is literally a
foreign concept, and anything is possible with persistence (and good
connections). Which also implies the downside -- nothing is permanent or
guaranteed, either.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Depends on the city. Shanghai is much more reasonable than say Beijing; each
city in the country has its own often conflicting rules.

------
matthewrudy
I love China but pollution, the great firewall, and visa complications make it
less attractive as somewhere to live.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Speaking as someone who lives in China...

The firewall won't bother you (assuming you wish to get around it); it's there
for the masses.

Any idiot with a US citizenship can get a tourist visa, lasting a year and
having only the requirement "visit Hong Kong (or any other non-China location)
every three months" (I was unambitious, and got a two-month one). Someone of
my acquaintance says he paid a visa-help company $1000 and got a business
visa, good for a year and imposing no requirements.

I have, in the past, had a working visa; if that's what you want, it's
generally done by your employer, not you.

Your "I love China" kind of leads me to believe you'd be familiar with this
already... what kind of complications have you experienced?

~~~
davepage
$1000! Crazy laowai. As a data point, my current F visa is 2 years, multi-
entry, 90 days and cost the nominal fee plus about $100 for the visa company
to drop it off at the consulate. Apparently, the F visa has been re-purposed
and there is a new M business visa. Any practical experience with that?

[of course, China habitually hassles journalists (Bloomberg) over visas]

~~~
da02
What's the name (or link) of the visa company?

~~~
davepage
Business visa Requirements: 1\. One completely filled out “Visa Application
Form, which you can down load from my attached PDF file. It needs to type with
computer then print out. Don’t leave any blank, write “N/A” in any item which
not suit for you. 2\. One recently taken 2X2 in. photo showing entire face and
without a hat on. Please affix the photo to the application form. Photo should
be light background, and taken within 6 months. 3\. Original passport with at
least 2 blank visa pages and valid for at least 6 months beyond the date of
application. 4\. Invitation letter from the company or university in China 5\.
Your company or college in US's letter for proof. 6\. Fee: Embassy: $140/per
person for single, double & multiple entry in one year Service fee: $35.00
Postage: $22.00 for local people pick up by themselves, +$7.40 for others
Total: $197.00 for local/ $204.40 for others.

Make your check paid to: Chinese Service Center .

Lucy Chinese Service Center of Greater Albany, LLC. 2394 Parkville Place
Schenectady, NY 12309 Tel:(518)346-0555 Email:CSCAlbany@yahoo.com

EDIT: formatting

~~~
da02
Thank you very much for taking the time to provide these details and tips.

------
nicholassmith
I know someone over in China at the moment and they said that the pollution
was so bad this morning that looking out of a window you couldn't see the
building next it. Scary thought of how much damage that'd do to your lungs.

~~~
tcas
The air pollution levels are similar to living an airport smoking lounge.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/beijing-air-akin-
to...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/beijing-air-akin-to-living-in-
smoking-lounge-chart-of-the-day.html)

~~~
Nav_Panel
EDIT: apparently my post below was predicated on a false assumption, please
disregard.

That's Beijing, not Shanghai, and I think we can assume that Beijing is at
least slightly cleaner than Shanghai, if not by much.

According this article[0], Shanghai's level reached 602.5, which, when
compared to the data on the graph you linked, is about 75 points _higher_ than
Beijing.

[0]: [http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/smog-
extremely...](http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/smog-extremely-
hazardous-levels-shanghai-21120221)

~~~
rollo_tommasi
Beijing is generally worse more often, partly because they get hit by dust
carried from the increasingly large Gobi Desert in addition to all the man-
made pollution.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not really. Beijing definitely get dust, but the real problem is that Beijing
is trapped in a bowl and gets some wicked inversions. And to think I could see
the summer palace from my office just yesterday.

------
teyc
For the engineers this is an interesting read:
[http://cornerstonemag.net/pollution-control-of-coal-fired-
po...](http://cornerstonemag.net/pollution-control-of-coal-fired-power-
generation-in-china-an-interview-with-wang-zhixuan/)

According to this article, coal fired stations are no longer the primary
source of PM2.5. Road vehicles emit an order of magnitude more particulate
matter.

I recall about 20 years ago, Santiago had to implement a system where odd-
numbered vehicles were allowed to drive on one day, and even-numbered the
next, to cut down on the haze problem.

Perhaps electric vehicles are the way to go.

------
JonFish85
What? But China ratified the Kyoto protocol and pledged to reduce their
pollution. This can't be true! It's almost as if the country completely
disregarded the treaty to grow their economy at any expense.

~~~
Symmetry
The Kyoto protocol has to do with CO2 emissions, which are very different from
the sort of particulate and sulfur pollution described in the article. Also, I
have no idea whether China is actually following that treaty, but the reason
the US didn't sign was that it did actually allow China to drastically
increase the amount of fossil fuels it burns.

~~~
danielweber
Yes, China and India are considered "developing" countries by Kyoto and can
produce all the CO2 they want under the treaty, so of course they signed it.

 _EDIT_ : and, of course, it was about CO2, not particulates. A country can
make certain trade-offs about different types of pollution (particulates v.
CO2 v. NOX).

~~~
_delirium
That part doesn't seem too unfair to me, considering that China and India's
per-capita emissions are still vastly below U.S. levels. It'd be one thing if
they were being allowed higher-than-US-level emissions due to being classified
as "developing" countries, but they aren't producing anywhere near that.

~~~
ams6110
It's the total emissions that matter, not per capita, and China leads the
world.

~~~
_delirium
That's a silly metric, though, because it just depends on where you divide
things up politically. If China split into two independent countries, suddenly
it wouldn't lead the world anymore, but the environment would not be any
better off. Similarly, if Europe merged into a United States of Europe, its
emissions would be much higher-ranked (maybe the largest), but it would not
actually emit more than currently. The environment does not care at what scale
you draw your political borders.

Per-capita emissions are one way of accounting for the obvious fact that if
Denmark (a nation of 5 million people) generated as much CO2 per year as
Germany does (a nation of 80 million people), Denmark would in this
hypothetical be more blameworthy, and it would be fair to ask Denmark to
reduce its emissions more than Germany, as it would already be emitting far
out of proportion to its size. Put differently, if every country reduced their
per-capita emissions to China's level, we'd actually be in great shape. That
suggests that China is not the main problem.

------
rahimnathwani
I feel thankful to be in Beijing. The AQI (air quality index) is only 202
(very unhealthy) here right now.

------
jread
I lived in Utah which can get very smoggy due to winter inversions. PM2.5
levels sometimes hit 80 mcg in the winter, often the highest in the country
and utterly depressing to live in.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Its a scandal when SLC hits 70 2.5PM, its just a bad day when Beijing hits 700
2.5PM. There is just no comparison.

------
javindo
Such a shame; an amazing city with wonderful prospects, becoming almost
entirely uninhabitable.

------
tokenadult
This could amuse me, but it saddens me, of course. The reason this could
almost amuse me is that I remember a conversation in 1982 in Taipei, soon
after my first visit to China, with a student from France. He too had just
been to China, and he thought China was a wonderful place, "Because it has no
air pollution." (Compared to 1982 Taiwan, yeah, the P.R.C. had very little
pollution because it had very little industrial production. I have never been
to France, so I don't know if he was also making a comparison to 1982 France
by that comment.) I wish that China (and, for that matter, India) had made it
a national development goal to grow in an environmentally friendly way. Once,
we didn't know technologies for producing industrial output and raising
prosperity without producing quite a bit of pollution along the way, but China
(and, again, India) could have learned from the mistakes of other countries
and the new technologies they developed to build up output without adding so
much to pollution.

Today, Taipei is remarkably clean. I was stunned in 2001, when I last lived
there as a permanent resident, by a visitor from Ukraine who arrived in Taiwan
after visiting Hong Kong. He commented that he liked Taiwan better than Hong
Kong because it was cleaner. I was stunned by that comment because the last
time I visited Hong Kong (before retrocession to China), no one would have
said so. Hong Kong is downwind of China, and maybe is not as cleaned up
anymore now that it is under Chinese rule. Taiwan under democratization has
become very clean indeed (although it too is downwind of China). Politicial
pluralization through a free press and free elections (an advantage India
already has) and effective rule by law (an advantage India is developing) seem
all over the world to help countries prosper in a more environmentally
sustainable manner. I wish China well in developing democracy and rule by law,
and in any event to enjoy clean air sooner rather than later.

~~~
tanzam75
India's cities are better -- but not that much better. In January 2013,
Beijing made headlines for a record-high PM2.5 of 755 mg/m^3. Nobody paid any
attention to New Delhi, whose PM2.5 topped out at 565 mg/m^3 the next day.

India's GDP is currently 1/4 that of China. Imagine how bad things will get in
another 10 years, when India's GDP reaches China's current GDP.

Source:
[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-15/pollu...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-15/pollution/36352070_1_air-
pollution-cu-pollution-levels)

------
wang0109
Pollution is now the No.1 reason rich people migrate out of China, second to
Education of their kids. I claim this from experience.

~~~
dylandrop
Kind of unfortunate too -- move away, and leave the problem behind. Of course
there's no problem with getting out of the polluted area, but there's a
problem with just giving up and moving elsewhere, forgetting the pollution
exists and not trying to solve it from abroad.

------
knappe
Having just come back, this week, from a three weeklong trip visiting a large
portion of the country (Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Guilin, Shanghai, Nanjing and
Shijiazjuang [along with a number of minor cities]) the pollution was by far
the worse in Shijiazjuang, though not on the level seen in Shanghai this week.
Shanghai was polluted, but the wind was generally blowing most of the
pollution away from the city.

My impression was that most people have a rather nonchalant attitude towards
the pollution. They know it is bad, but don't really know what to do about it.
This includes my American brother who has been living in Shijiazjuang for the
last year. Whenever the topic of pollution came up, he didn't really seem to
have any strong feelings about the pollution, either way and explained that
seems to be most people's attitude too.

------
nostromo
It's amazing how much of this is getting to the West Coast of the US.

By one measure 29% of SF's air pollution originates in Asia.

[http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i46/8846news3.html?T+Online+...](http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i46/8846news3.html?T+Online+News)

------
Cthulhu_
So why do people use those flimsy face masks instead of proper gas masks /
carbon filters?

~~~
prawks
Cost is a likely factor.

------
kvnwng
There's also a lack of understanding on the effects of this pollution,
especially as it becomes more regular. I worked and lived in China for 7 years
and just getting parents to close the windows of an obstetric hospital with
newborns was difficult enough. There is a belief that "fresh air" is always
better than what is in the room. When I asked nurses about the public health
impact of this pollution on children, they often stared blankly back.

~~~
ashray
Had the exact same problem with my parents in New Delhi. Father was suffering
from lung disease. Wanted to sit outside on the balcony - fresh air,
apparently. I tried to explain to him that the air is laden with dangerous
levels of particulate pollutants. He didn't care. He died earlier this year.

PM10/2.5 levels continue to be disastrous (1900+/700+ on some days especially
around Diwali). Mother still likes to open balcony doors and room windows to
let 'fresh air' flow through the house.

Neither are/were uneducated. Post grads in SCIENCE FFS!

Cannot. Explain. It.

~~~
jpatokal
But does closing windows really help? I mean sure, short term it slows down
the exchange of air between the inside and outside, so it'll be helpful if
there's a sudden spike that _goes away_. But if the pollution is a chronic
problem, and it certainly is in Shanghai and New Delhi, then eventually the
equilibrium will equalize and the air inside will be just as bad.

~~~
c0riander
It would help if your air conditioning/HVAC system is also doing air
filtration (as they do in the US, not familiar with Shanghai/New Dehli).

------
wil421
What did the cities look like in the US and Europe during parts of the
Industrial Revolution?

I cant imagine it was as persistent and thick as some parts of China.

~~~
DanBC
As already mentioned in the thread the London "pea soupers" were as bad, or
worse, than the pictures we see here.

Google image search for ["pea souper"] for images from 1950s London.

~~~
wil421
Here is a good link in case anyone is interested.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243732/Pea-
souper-k...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243732/Pea-souper-
killed-12-000-So-black-screen-cinemas-So-suffocatingly-lethal-ran-coffins-How-
Great-Smog-choked-London-60-years-ago-week.html)

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coldcode
Air pollution is one thing the leadership suffers as well. Everyone has to
breathe. If the people are poor or suffering in some other way but the
leadership is living large then they can ignore the issues. But everyone needs
air. At some point they have to deal with it.

~~~
jajathehut1
+1. Also applies to western countries riding their moral highhorse - pollution
knows no borders. 1/3rd of pollution in LA comes from China.

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calgaryeng
And yet your President is still prioritizing coal over Canadian oilsands....

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3am
I appreciate how this is currently sharing the frontpage with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860839)

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brianbreslin
Do you guys think this will spur china to jump ahead in greening/pollution
reduction? It would be incredibly costly to do so ($$$), but incredibly costly
not to (people).

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seanmcdirmid
344 2.5 AQI right now in Beijing. I just bought a $1k air purifier to cope
last week to cope with what is going to be a very bad winter.

~~~
simplemath
What model?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Blue air. Second largest one.

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_pmf_
Damn these Chinese! Can't they cheaply produce our goods with slave labor
without polluting our precious planet?

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squozzer
I'd engage in some schadenfreude, but a good bit of that stuff will be lurking
over LA none too soon.

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nabla9
Investment idea: Companies that manufacture sulfur dioxide scrubbers for coal
plants.

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fnsa
this looks like a good sign for the world economy. S&P 2000!

