The Air Up There

China’s air quality, already dangerously bad, is expected to get even worse.

The sun is nowhere to be seen this morning. The smog rolls lazily around my window, wrapping my building in a soft grey blanket urging me to remain in my warm bed today. By the looks of the pea soup sky, and the visibility of the next door building but not the building two doors down, I’m guessing today is a 3B on the SEPA pollution index. That means older people should stay inside, no one should exercise, and, although this is not bullet pointed on SEPA’s website, there is no one in the city who actually wants to get up and greet the day.

Biking to work in the trail of bus engines, I remind myself to buy an air mask again. Even a cheap, simple dense cotton face mask sold at any supermarket would help filter out some of the PM 10, that’s particulate matter larger than ten microns, the dominant air pollutant in Beijing. Most bikers in Beijing don’t wear masks, or helmets for that matter. Bike safety measures seem to be restricted to biking slow and keeping your seat low enough to be able to stop yourself with your feet, or leap from your bike to the curb as the situation may call for.

Arriving at work, I check http://english.sepa.gov.cn/, the government air quality website, to discover that today Beijing is a 141 on the API, making it a 3A on the pollution scale. Even Lhasa is a 2 today. China’s rampant coal burning is starting to travel by more than word of mouth these days. Clouds of pollution have been found not only in neighboring Korea, but even as far as the West Coast of California, with locations as far inland as Lake Tahoe have found evidence of Chinese pollution in the air.

The government is well aware of the gravity of the situation, but there is no easy solution. More nuclear power plants are being built, but this brings up the issue of disposing of the toxic waste. As for hydropower, The Three Gorges Dam, once touted as the governments poster child for alternative energy, has become an environmental disaster; trapping silt, chemicals and sewage, causing erosion, and threatening to burst at any moment. There is no easy answer, and as China continues to develop at a breakneck speed, its power plat emissions are expected to rise by 60% by 2008. For now, my contribution to improving air quality is going to be restricted to my lungs only: I’m buying a mask on the way home from work today.