Beijing starts releasing key air pollution data

It's a tie between Mexico city and Beijing....Both are over populated,poor pollution control and i giant Yellow cloud over the cities when you fly in.

Wait, the same government which hid its knowledge of SARS until it spread worldwide?

Dam, it is foggy out and when I breath it burns, but the government says its great!

"Air good, just cloudy and dark all day"

I've lived in China for nearly 10 years. The average Chinese person really doesn't care about the environment, only making money. It's appalling they way their trash their air and water without a pause. In the countryside, they burn their garbage, plastics and all. In the smaller cities they often just throw it out the window. Right now they're celebrating Chinese new year and the air is thick with cordite (gun powder residue). They'll set off 100 times as much fireworks this week as the US does on July 4th.

i hope that china get's the cleaner's put on there factories smoke stack's that will improve there air quality. we had them on ours at the paper factory here in ohio. love from me to the people of china. i do not like to see nobody suffer from air polution. it will contaminat the water from the factories that put out black smoke from the factories. that do not have cleaners on them. love from a christian from ohio roger isaac

I would not trust the veracity of these readings.

True American History: The Donora Smog - 1948
With a severe temperature inversion, poisonous gases such as sulfuric acid and nitrogen dioxide were trapped in the stagnant air of the Donora mill town in the Monongahela River Valley in Pennsylvania. Released from various steel works and a zinc plant, whose sulfuric emissions had wiped out most vegetation within a half-mile, 20 people were killed and thousands stricken with respiratory and heart problems by the smog in the fall of 1948.

The hope we learn from the Chinesse. If we keep our heads in the sand, our skies will look the same as there's.

Good work, It is a start.

Just this morning, after complaining many times to city officials, the police, and fire department, about people in my suburban town burning wood, and sometimes, plastic, in open-air bonfires in their back yards, a councilman gave me the regulations of two cities in Ohio that are very restrictive of not only open burning, but home, wood-burning furnaces. I hope our city implements those regulations soon. The air sticks summer, winter, fall, and spring. I have to close my windows in the summer, and turn on the air conditioner, so I can sleep. Otherwise, the toxic smoke fills my house. In the winter, I step outside, and am greeted by the heavy smoke from a neighbor's home-heating, wood-burning furnace.

Has anyone checked out the Australian and New Zealand pollution statistics? Considering China has at least 25 times the population of these two small Westernised Oceana nations they are not the real problem, even if their sky is yellow. Its invisible pollutants that cause the most damage from USA style consumption economies, far more than any European nations, particularly considering the two relatively small populations they have..

This isn't because they are concerned about protecting people. Its so they have "official" statements to discredit people who have taken to measuring the air themselves.

When air is bad what then?

China is a cesspool. Do not eat ANY food imported from China. This means no apple juice (85% comes from China).

We need to READ LABELS CLOSELY as the food source is often poorly identified.

The Chinese government has finally realized how to begin to solve the air pollution problem there. Release the facts daily.

The Chinese government has no problem telling the truth...so long as the truth happens to coincide with the story they're telling.

You can bet the readings will be "adjusted" for political compensation.

Wow! One whole monitoring site! In the whole city! Good Lord think of how much that must cost! Let's just hope the equipment wasn't made in China with substandard and or inaccurate parts...

Beijing releasing air quality data is like the obama administration releasing unemployment numbers.

NEWS BRIEF, China claims their air in Beijing is cleaner than the exhaust from an old bus. Claims that the new air monitoring station are actually inside an oxygen tent at the municipal hospital are being denied. NEWS BRIEF item number two; Beijing citizens can now buy new "slip & slide" footwear that allows them to actually skate across the layer of pollution on their sidewalks; one observer in a highrise apartment claimed it looked like all the people were in a giant pinball machine as they slid everywhere. A new business has started after it was noted the pollution was actually acidic and when mixed with water(as in rain) it can be used as a substitute for battery acid. Beijing police have cancelled over one dozen missing person reports after a group of senior citizens disappeared in a park after a rain storm flooded their campsite; it appears the flood waters were highly acidic and the only evidence of their presence was a pile of marbles the old folks kept as pets in their pockets.