Through the polluted haze

Whew, I am really missing Utah this week. I have always taken for granted the fact that we have clean air to breathe almost all of the time. Even when we have an inversion and the air is polluted, it's cleaner air than we have most days in Beijing. I have been doing some research and air pollution is nasty stuff. Chronic, long term exposure to air this bad can cause respiratory infections, lung disease and these pollution particles are so small that they penetrate deep into your lungs and can even get into your blood stream. The US embassy has an air quality monitor and they publish it's data frequently throughout the day. A good day with no visible pollution has an Air Quality Index of 0-100 and there is no risk in being outside. 100-150 is slightly polluted and you may experience a slight irritation in your throat or lungs. 150-200 is where it starts to be visible as a haze and 200-250 is moderately polluted and you should stay indoors at this point because even healthy people be noticeably affected. An index of 250-300 is heavily polluted and 300-500 is severely polluted with strong throat and lung irritations and it can start to trigger illness at this point. On Saturday, our index was 742 which is basically toxic. Everything was gray and it was like a heavy fog of grime had settled over the city. That is 25 times the allowed amount of pollution in the US. And China is so funny about this data, they have gotten after the US embassy a few times for reporting these index numbers and on the Chinese news station (we were watching the English subtitled channel), they reported the haze merely as fog not as the hazardous pollution that it really was.

We live right in the center of this huge city and you can't even see the enormous buildings that are more than a block away.

Everything is so gray and dreary.

Ick. Needless to say, we have been staying inside as much as possible this weekend! When we move back to the states, I will have so much more appreciation for clean, safe air to breathe.