Living in Beijing’s polluted air

I woke up in my dark bedroom the other day, head pounding and mouth dry. Before I even got out of bed, I knew that Beijing was having one of its hazardous-air-quality days. There was a tickle in my throat. My eyes stung and watered the minute I set foot outside.

On a similar day a few days before, I’d walked only 10 minutes from my apartment to my friend’s place. By the time I got there, my coat, scarf and hair smelled the way they would have smelled after a night in a smoky bar followed by a couple of hours standing behind a car’s exhaust pipe.

More health and science news

Report: 700 doctors wrote possibly harmful Medicare prescriptions

Tracy Weber, Charles Ornstein and Jennifer LaFleur | ProPublica

Review calls doctors “very extreme” in prescribing and says Medicare should do more to stop them.

A climate change worry on the wing

Darryl Fears

Biologists worry that birds such as Arctic terns are starving, as climate change is leading to food shortages.

Obama to outline plan to address climate change in ‘the weeks ahead’

Lenny Bernstein

His forthcoming plan is expected to include efforts such as reducing carbon emissions from power plants.

If that’s what the air pollution is doing to my new winter coat, I wonder what it’s doing to my lungs.

The fine particulates in Beijing air, created by coal being burned to generate electricity and to heat homes, and by car exhaust and factories, are the most dangerous kind, doctors say, because they can lodge in the lungs, where they are absorbed into the heart, the blood and lung vessels, potentially causing heart disease and cancer. Adding to the problem are Los Angeles-like inversions that trap air within the city’s boundaries.

This winter has been particularly bad. January alone had 19 days of hazardous air quality, which means that levels of the smallest particulate matter soared to over 301 micrograms per cubic meter. The U.S. Embassy, which monitors Beijing’s air quality, says that hazardous air can lead to “serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; serious risk of respiratory effects in general population.”

Not long ago, the embassy posted recommendations about what to do in hazardous air situations. When the pollution rises above 500 (which the embassy calls “beyond index,” although the term “crazy bad” also has been used), it advises people to stay indoors with air purifiers, be familiar with the signs of heart attack and stroke, and remain sedentary. Don’t burn candles. There’s even a link for a California site on dealing with wildfire smoke, which creates the same level of fine particulates as really bad air days in China. Justin Higgins, an embassy spokesman, said, “I think it’s fair to say, given the recent conditions, that we wanted to push our recommendations out there.”

Not the most polluted city

It’s hard to compare Beijing’s bad air days to conditions in the United States. A friend of mine who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s recalls the California smog as “a constant, eye-stinging haze that ranged from yellowish to brownish.” But the Clean Air Act in 1970 had an impressive effect, so much so that Salt Lake City had a minor freakout in December when its pollution reached a level that would be considered only moderate by Chinese standards: a smallest-particulate reading of 130. Utah officials deemed it a “public health emergency,” and USA Today described it as “sickening fog.”

By Chinese standards, it’s barely worth mentioning. In fact, 130 in Beijing is officially just “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” My husband and I consider 150 to be the rough cutoff for jogging outside.