Beyond a choke: Aussies barely breathing in Beijing | Adelaide Now -g-icon-error cloudy-day nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right nav_small_right 0A0871E9-1636-49F4-

Seeing rows of masked faces on the school bus, Sharon Carr was very clear.
She has lived in Beijing for five years. she loves the city and the people. It was home.
But around China's capital, toxic pollution clouds eventually forced Carl to make a big decision to bring the children back to Australia for life.
On a very bad day, it's not normal smoke, it could blur Brisbane's horizon-it's a dense particle --
Filling fug that can cause severe respiratory disease and cause asthma attacks.
"There has been a concern in my mind all the time, but I have been really worried for the past two months," Carl said . ".
"I decided to leave because of the pollution.
Never been so bad.
"Smog can be so thick because of poor visibility that driving becomes dangerous.
The smog is so thick that city residents are warned not to take risks outdoors;
The flight must be canceled and the flight attendant will hand it out in person if they arrive
The mask of touching the ground;
The factory was told to slow down production and that schools should also reduce outdoor activities.
An international school even put up a pressurized dome on the playground so that children can play outside on bad days-it's like a moon or a distant airless planet
This is an alsoa horror preview of what happens when smoke is completely out of control.
Beijing is not shrouded in this horrible smoke every day, but the days of toxic smoke have become more and more common in recent winter, and residents in Beijing often struggle to breathe.
Running in the air-
Filter masks and air purifiers, as well as photos of masked Beijingers walking in thick gray toxic clouds, making it a newspaper around the world.
The city, which has a population of 20 million, is blocked by a toxic combination of car exhaust, factory smoke and smoke from coal heating.
Other cities in northern China have also experienced the same bad weather, the aftermath of the cold winter
Promote industrial development.
Sharon Carr said she was satisfied with the decision to leave Beijing and return to Perth, although her husband will stay in the city to work, at least for some time --time. As a part-
The boss of his company, he can be a white man. collar fly-in fly-
Allocate time between Beijing, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
Carl has already bought a ticket and she and the children will leave Beijing Forever on June.
"A lot of people are making the same decisions right now," 41-year-
Old training consultant from Perth.
"My mother called me;
My brother called me.
They begged me to go home.
"Before the recent toxic weather began, Carl comforted himself by thinking that the children's lungs could easily regenerate.
But bad days are coming and getting worse.
There is always an air purifier in the apartment at home, and the school where the children attend is equipped with high
Quality purifier.
But pollution has been on the rise, and on a very bad day Carl finally decided it was too big.
"The locals have eaten enough," she said . "
"They are very angry now.
Sadly, they can't leave.
They're stuck here.
"China is proud of its amazing speed of doubling often.
In the past 30 years, tens of millions of people have been lifted out of the economic growth of extreme poverty.
The price of this increase is that air pollution and water pollution are getting worse and worse, and now many Chinese are wondering if the price is too high.
Chinese authorities typically avoid smog that hangs over cities across the country, but Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is expected to step down within the next week, acknowledged the issue at the end of January.
In a statement posted on the central government website, he said the smog "affected people's production and health" and suggested immediate action to address the issue.
But this man is going to take his place.
Prime Minister Li Keang warned that there was no short-term fix.
The national radio station quoted him as saying that the issue had been brewing for a long time and that it would "take a long time to resolve it"term process".
The rolling smog has stirred interest among Chinese Weibo users who continue to post messages of contempt and ridicule.
Lawyer Xu Xin's message on Twitter
Just like Sina Weibo, a microblogging site that is usually strictly censored by Chinese officials, has been forwarded more than 47,000 times.
In a photo of the haze, he wrote: "The biggest distance on earth is . . . . . . Standing on Tiananmen Square, can't see Chairman Mao ", his huge portrait sits above the gate of heaven and peace, overlooking the square.
On January, actress Song Dandan posted a sad message on Sina Weibo: "I was born and raised in Beijing and lived here for more than 50 years.
The flood of immigrants and all the other temptations were not enough to get me out of this lovely city.
Today, the idea keeps spinning around in my mind: "Where will I go to spend my old age," Zhang Quanling, a Chinese TV celebrity, wrote pointedly on her microblog: "I really don't understand people who smoke outdoors.
They really don't know how to be frugal!
Now in Beijing, just breathe the air twice and you can smoke free anywhere.
"It is said that the Chinese authorities are solving the problem, but the never-satisfying demand for energy exceeds the capacity of China to build power stations, and many new and wealthy Chinese want to drive.
Smog in Shanghai rarely reaches toxic levels in Beijing, but Mark Rivers, a 44-year-old mining company executive, estimates he sees blue skies every two weeks.
In Woodridge, south of Brisbane, he has been living in a city of 23 million people off the coast of China for four years, and his lungs have been complaining.
He coughed all the time and did not fully recover for a while.
"I had to leave the meeting and interrupt the phone because of a cough attack," he said . ".
"I have never had a problem living elsewhere.
He sees smog as the new normal for most parts of China.
"I think people in China have forgotten what the sky looks like.
They forgot what was normal.
"He is pessimistic about the potential to clean the sky, at least in the short term, and he says things will get worse before things get better.
Recently, he visited Xi'an, the home of terracotta warriors and one of the main tourist centers in China. He was surprised to find that visibility in Xi'an dropped to about 200.
Last year, Chinese officials finally began to release terrible information about pm2. 5.
Pollution levels recorded in cities across the country. These PM2.
The reading measures the degree to which it is small and dangerous.
Micrograms of particles in the air;
Such small "fine" particles can go deep into the lung tissue and even into the blood.
The US embassy in Beijing released PM2.
The data for 2008 appeared to be very irritating to the Chinese authorities (Wikileaks published a 2009 telegram stating that Chinese officials found the embassy's data "confusing and insulting ", and urged an end to the war so as not to China
S. relations have been adversely affected ).
Ultimately, however, public demand, perhaps inspired by the US embassy feed, has pushed China to start broadcasting pollution levels in every provincial capital city.
Now the US consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu have announced PM2.
5 read an easy-to-understand index, broadcast via Twitter and available on the Internet.
Almost every foreigner and many Chinese residents are reading every day, and these indexes monitor the harm of what we all take for granted-the air we breathe.
In 2010, the Beijing embassy index exceeded the highest reading of 500, and a shocked American official called it "crazy bad news" on an honest but undiplomatic tweet that wasSince then PM2.
The 5 index levels regularly exceed the index maximum (simply recorded as the "beyond index"), sometimes up to 900.
Terrible Super run
The heat in December and January shocked even Beijing residents.
The shocked American official is likely to call them "super crazy"bad".
One day in January, property prices in Beijing soared by 700, which made Beijingers very angry.
"This is the historical record of Beijing," wrote Zhao Jing, a resident of Beijing, who usually writes in the name of Michael.
"I closed the doors and windows;
The air purifiers operate automatically at full power.
"Sadly, pollution in December and January is not a winter surge that can be tolerated and forgotten.
In the early to mid
In February, Beijing's reading volume was still hovering above 350-"dangerous" and "need protection"-and it climbed to 373 just last week.
Jessica Rudd has been living in Beijing with her husband Albert Xie and her youngest daughter Josephine since 2009.
This is the second round of the 29 th. year-
Old novelist who grew up in southern Brisbane.
When she was a baby, she lived with her family in the Chinese capital. Her father, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, was a diplomat at the Beijing embassy.
"When I was eight months old, we moved to Beijing," she said . ".
"At that time, it was a place where everyone was burning coal, it was dirty and dark, and mom just described it as gray.
"Like other residents in Beijing and residents living in other cities in northern China, Kevin Rudd doesn't like pollution and she and her husband spend $2000 in Switzerland --
Made an air purifier for her daughter's bedroom.
Other cheaper models struggle with air in the master bedroom and living room.
"If the situation gets worse or stays the same, we may invest in another you --
"Beaut Swiss one," Rudd said . ".
She has some friends who recently decided to leave the city due to pollution and other reasons-but pollution is always a factor in any escape decision.
"There are also good days in Beijing," she said . "
"In fact, it can be beautiful and blue for a few weeks at a time, and then there are other weeks that can be fouls.
"Kevin Rudd knows that China is in a huge industrial revolution, and Beijing is not the only city to be suffocated by the pollution caused by the rapid industrialisation.
London was shrouded in smog 60 years ago, killing thousands of people.
Like Beijing in recent months, the British capital has been unusually cold in winter since 1952, and Londoners have burned more coal to keep warm.
In December of that year, a rolling pea
The city is shrouded in smog and visibility sometimes drops to 1 feet (30 cm ).
The Londoners could not see their hands in the dirty, damp air.
There are now as many as 12,000 people, most of them patients and elderly people, who died because of that special smog.
The government took action through the Clean Air Act, but ten years later, pea-
The Londoners are still unhappy.
"I think this is something we all have to remember," Rudd said . ".
"This is China's industrial revolution, and of course it will be polluted. "By-
Whether the industrial revolution or not, Beijing's smog has been a hot topic in Chinese newspapers and social media and Internet blogs.
The Asian Beat blog is heavily worded.
950 micrograms per cubic meter (pm2. 5.
In January 13, the level 5 air pollution of Tongzhou finally reached the level of commercial exploitation.
Chinese officials are pleased that unburned coal grains, lead, mercury and carbon oxides will become commercial assets in the city.
The blog went on to report, "it is said that Australia's mining giant Rio Tinto is keen to tap resources on the dusty streets of the ancient capital.
A spokesman for the company said even the lungs of people who have lived in Beijing for more than a year could be worth $150 in the spot market for rare metals.
"Smog is not a funny attraction for a Brisbane couple who moved to Beijing with their children six months ago.
Francesca Jacovelli and Paul Priebbenow find smog to be frustrating and limited and now they think it could affect seven peopleyear-
Health of old Siena
"I 've realized that in days of high pollution, anything over 300, Siena is really sleepy," says Jacovelli . ".
"I have only established this connection in the past month.
We went out, and in less than an hour Sienna would say, 'I am too tired to walk any more '.
I think it's because the weather is hot and we're in a new place, but it does seem that days of heavy pollution do affect her-perhaps because her lungs are a little affected by asthma.
"In Brisbane, this family lives in Sandgate, Moreton Bay, north of the city --
East, they spend a lot of time outside-walking, biking, kayaking, and taking a deep breath of the fresh air from the Bay and the nearby bodender wetland.
In Beijing, they live in an apartment on the 12 th floor and they can't open the windows and barely see the green.
"While it's fun and exciting to learn a new culture and new language in different countries, the lifestyle is a bit frustrating and what you can do in a day is limitedto-
"The foundation of the day," said Jacovelli.
There are two Priebbenow
A one-year contract to work as a water quality consultant in Beijing, jacovelli has warned him not to consider extending the contract period because as soon as the contract is completed, she will take the children home-even earlier.
But Priebbenow is interested in air pollution in Beijing.
"Experience it first --
"The hand is something very interesting," he said, "because of my thoughts on the water quality, everything in all of this air, obviously we all sucked in, but it won't stay in the air.
These particles pollute the waterways, have an impact on the ecology and have an additional impact on health.
"Priebbe now goes to work in Beijing by bike when pollution permits, but if the US embassy reads more than 300 or 400, he will consider staying at home.
He said he was frustrated by the restrictions caused by smog-according to the measures of the US embassy, the level of cancellation of various children's activities was 250, and it is usually difficult to know 11-year-
Will old Oliver attend his football training.
Jacovelli was annoyed by the restrictions.
"We just stayed in those weeks when it was read on a large scale.
It's just frustrating.
Like the end of the world.