Fighting dirty air: How Chinese citizens try to “wash their lungs”
Until December, 2015, the Chinese government had never issued a "red alert" for severe smog levels in any of its cities. But in December it issued two of them, closing schools, stalling freeways, and leading some environmental policy experts to believe that, with respect to air pollution, the recent alarms may represent a national turning point.
The most recent alert, issued December 25th, was applied to four major cities in addition to Beijing, where the concentration of PM2.5 in some parts of the city peaked at over 500 micrograms per cubic meter on December22. In Tainjing, south of Beijing, a red alert was triggered when levels surpassed 500.