Clean Air a 'Luxury' in Beijing

NPR just posted an article about Beijing's air quality. Most of it isn't anything new (US Embassy's air quality standards vs. local) but I thought I'd share a few highlights:

Living inside the pollution zone, those daily measurements determine how my family spends its days. Whenever the levels hit "very unhealthy," we keep the kids indoors and refuse to let them take part in outdoor activities, no matter how much whining might ensue. When to wear a pollution mask, when to stay indoors, it's all become crucial knowledge, even for our 4-year-old.

One prime example was last Sunday, when the pollution was literally off the U.S. Embassy air monitor scale, hitting a level described as "beyond index." In contrast, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection, the air pollution was "light."

Given the amount of time my kids now spend indoors, I decided to get an expert to check the air inside my apartment. This, it turned out, was a decision that has entirely ruined my peace of mind.

"We do that quite a lot," admitted Chris Buckley ruefully, after measuring the indoor pollution in our apartment. The British expat runs a business selling imported air purifiers.

"We estimate about five to six years of foregone life expectancy over the long haul for living in Beijing relative to [China's] southern cities," he says.

Together with colleagues from Columbia University, the Brookings Institution, Peking University and Tsinghua University, Ebenstein looked at life expectancy rates north and south of China's Huai river. That's relevant because the government provides heating — mainly coal-powered — north of the river, but not south. As a result, air pollution is much worse north of the river.

For those of us living here, protecting our kids from the air they breathe is almost impossible. For a long while, our major strategy was denial, but this is no longer an option. It's clear that there is a health cost in living in such pollution. And the immediate cost to us of doing this story has been almost $3,000 in new air purifiers — an option that's out of reach for most Beijing residents.

The full article is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143214875/clean-air-a-luxury-in-beijings-pollution-zone


My first reaction to this article is to be defensive. I guess it tends to be with most American China-bashing articles which I find to be from a very narrow viewpoint. She seriously spent $3000 on air purifiers??? I find it difficult to believe you couldn't find good quality filters for way less. The guy who wanted to sell the air filter is the one who tested the air quality in your home??? Give me a break. I'm pretty sure the same door to door salesmen convinced my parents to buy a $400 air filter for their home in rural Wisconsin! If you seriously think the air here is so dangerous, why the heck did you bring your 4 year old here in the first place?? If you saw a place that was foggy in the US would you immediately assume all of it was from pollution? And don't diss those awesome coal burning power plants that keep my apartment so warm! Is it seriously that much different here than the other major cities down south??

Then- I think about it a little bit. Actually, even in rural Wisconsin we would get air quality warnings if it was really foggy for an extended period of time. Why would I think it would be any different when there are thousands of factories surrounding my home? China IS polluted- and I don't really know why I feel like I need to defend it in this regard. This summer when I was in Guizhou standing on a bridge over the most beautiful gorge I'd ever seen- I looked over to see the gigantic trash pile going down the slope where the local village threw their garbage into the least polluted waters I'd seen here. People literally threw garbage into the rivers for fun. Now multiply that times the 13 million odd people and all the cars and comfortable coal heating. Gah.

What's your reaction to this type of news?

When I lived in Shenzhen I invested in home air quality. I found a decent air purifier for about $100 (it might have been closer to $200, it was a long time ago). I also bought a few snake plants (the Chinese was tiger skin plant), which act as air purifiers and are easy to take care of--they require little water and sunlight.

My thought is that if you can step outside and remain in denial about the pollution, then the pollution may already be, shall we say, affecting you.   

If I have kids here I'm going to do my utmost to leave China because of the air, even here in Hangzhou it's pretty disgusting and this city has invested a lot in keeping trees everywhere etc.

Beijing sounds like a hellhole to live in to me

My girlfriend studied this area for her Ma and apparently China is so far below the international WHO standards for air that they just made up their own standards which they still tend to fail

I've seen independent research on inside air quality, and it agrees with the claims made in the article. Similarly, I've seen research that shows that different brands of air filters are able to provide different levels of clean air. The better (and more expensive) filters (like BlueAir) are able to filter down to, I believe, 0.1 microns, while cheaper models (like Honeywell) can do .3 microns; the US Embassy readings that are the object of so much debate measure particles 2.5 microns and smaller, which are those linked to cancer, heart disease, etc.

Similarly, different brands of purifiers are able to cleanse the air at different rates; the faster an air filter can clean the air, the cleaner the air in the room will be. For foreign brands of air purifiers, you can check look up the CADR (clean air distribution rate) online.

The question that no one seems able to answer is what is the "optimal" amount of scrubbing that air needs to keep us all from getting lung cancer and dying young. Given how disgusting Beijing's air has been, I'm like to believe that the more scrubbing the air can get, the better.

A month after arriving in Beijing we bought a 1,000RMB Midea HEPA filter, which immediately stopped me from waking up with a runny nose and a cough each morning. We've also bought a number of plants. owever, we've also ordered a BlueAir and will probably pick up a Honeywell, too, since they're only around 800RMB on taobao.

My wife has just gotten a very good job here in Beijing, but I very much want us to get out of the city. The air makes it unlivable. I don't think either of us needs to be here so badly that we'd be willing to give up five or six years of life, which is a legitimate worst-case scenario.

My thought is that if you can step outside and remain in denial about the pollution, then the pollution may already be, shall we say, affecting you.   

Haha- I never outright denied there was pollution, I guess I just thought some of the claims (like it was necessary to spend $3000 to clean the air in your home) were a little overboard. It's really nice to hear how some of you are dealing with it.

I may have just changed my tone from "eh, it's not so bad" to "the air really is killing us all" this week. Over the weekend I picked up a bit of a respiratory infection. If the black snot wasn't enough to make me realize the air wasn't clean, the brown crap I've been coughing up in the morning certainly was. A quick google search on "brown mucus" seemed to indicate that basically the only people who get that are smokers. I do not smoke, and to think that just breathing the air here could be doing the same things to my lungs freaks me out. Then I hear all the local people walking to work all hacking up their own brown chunks- even if I cough into a tissue and they spit on the ground we're all full of nasty gobs of that Beijing air....

When I first came to China we used to joke that smoking would probably be more healthy than not as at least some of the air you breathed was being filtered (along with we were all losing weight here because of the magical "stomach dragon" living in our digestive track), but this is the first time I've really been concerned about it.

I think we're finally going to get a filter.

My wife and I have bought totobobo clean air masks. They've a bit pricy ($25 each, retail), but they have been lab tested to provide as clean of air as you can get, provide a custom fit, are washable and reusable, and have replaceable filters. I keep one in my jacket pocket now and wear it on bad days…it seems to work (I don't cough at all anymore). The downside is that the mask isn't exactly good looking, but I see it as a passive-aggressive FU to Beijing and its bad air.

Quote from: zero on December 08, 2011, 09:25:05 AM

My thought is that if you can step outside and remain in denial about the pollution, then the pollution may already be, shall we say, affecting you.   

Haha- I never outright denied there was pollution, I guess I just thought some of the claims (like it was necessary to spend $3000 to clean the air in your home) were a little overboard. It's really nice to hear how some of you are dealing with it.

I may have just changed my tone from "eh, it's not so bad" to "the air really is killing us all" this week. Over the weekend I picked up a bit of a respiratory infection. If the black snot wasn't enough to make me realize the air wasn't clean, the brown crap I've been coughing up in the morning certainly was. A quick google search on "brown mucus" seemed to indicate that basically the only people who get that are smokers. I do not smoke, and to think that just breathing the air here could be doing the same things to my lungs freaks me out. Then I hear all the local people walking to work all hacking up their own brown chunks- even if I cough into a tissue and they spit on the ground we're all full of nasty gobs of that Beijing air....

When I first came to China we used to joke that smoking would probably be more healthy than not as at least some of the air you breathed was being filtered (along with we were all losing weight here because of the magical "stomach dragon" living in our digestive track), but this is the first time I've really been concerned about it.

I think we're finally going to get a filter.

The cigarettes here are less healthy too!

I don't think either of us needs to be here so badly that we'd be willing to give up five or six years of life, which is a legitimate worst-case scenario.

Five to six years is the difference between northern China and southern China. It tells you nothing about how the lifespan of a westerner might be affected.

Most western countries probably still have much cleaner than southern China. Additionally, the people under consideration are Chinese who live with the pollution every day of their lives. Most westerners spend a few years in China at most, and, at any rate, aren't exposed to the air as infants when the lungs are still developing.

That research is useless to us as westerners, except to tell us that, yes, the air is pretty nasty. Which we already knew.