Beijing's air's OK as long as you chew it carefully before swallowing

[Gaia]

The thing that bugged me about this article was that there was almost no attention paid to the causes of air pollution in Beijing:

- Coal-fired power plants
- Airborne dust from arid regions surrounding Beijing and to the north, northeast
- Cooking and heating using charcoal
- Industrial plants
- Diesel exhaust
- The interaction of particulate matter with ozone to create petrochemical smog

Beijing may be the future of *some* cities on the planet, but it doesn't have to be.

Interesting article though, since this crap blows across the Sea of Japan to afflict Japanese cities with PM2.0 pollution, which never used to happen. Terrifying. Also scary/disgusting: 12-24% of the smog in Los Angeles air comes from China.

And cancer in China is already exploding!

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/16/beijing-airpocalypse-city-almost-uninhabitable-pollution-china

Fyi: http://aqicn.org/map/world/

[Verdilac]

Well, just my 2 cents, Something I notice when I'm there is the major things that caused a big difference in the air quality in most parts of China was the flight approach paths of the planes.

Basically they fly a lot of the planes over the built up and city center locations at peak traffic times.

As for Beijing, well the dust blows in from the Gobi desert so a lot of the time it looks worse than it actually is, you clean your car and the next morning its covered in fine sand and if the wind is blowing from the north or west or both, you best get your dust mask out as in dries your pipes out in a hurry, coughing a lung up in Beijing has a whole different meaning.

The wind direction and the dust situation are local knowledge if Oliver Wainwright had bothered to ask any of them, its a bit of a convoluted article and wondered why he had bothered writing it.

Incidentally they do use cloud bursting rockets when things get to congested, they bring the rain and damp things down, I've noticed there deployment on quite a few occasions from a location I was residing, they used them over a 2 day period with good results as it did rain and rain wasn't expected.

I find its a great place to visit but the dust is something you have to take into account if your a visitor