14 DAY TRIAL // Supposing that the city of Beijing in China has “set a new record for air pollution” written down on its list of New Year's resolutions, then it is safe to say that the urban area is well on track to meet this goal.
Long story short, news from this part of the world says that, this past Wednesday at about 9 p.m. local time, air concentrations of fine particulate matter began to rise.
South China Morning Post reports that, on the very same day, the city's high officials issued this year's first warning for very high levels of air pollution.
Information shared with the public by the Beijing Environmental Protection Monitoring Center says that, by Thursday morning, the AQI (Air Quality Index) for this urban area had exceeded 300.
This value represents the threshold for the worst level of air pollution that the AQI is used to measure.
According to the United States Embassy in Beijing, the city's AQI had a value of 400 on Thursday morning, and eventually climbed to reach over 670.
This means that local air pollution reached levels about 26 times higher than what the World Health organization currently considers to be safe.
Given the fact that, as mentioned, the AQI's highest value is 300, it should not come as a surprise that the news spread that the levels of air pollution in Beijing were pretty much off the charts.
Thus, once air concentrations of fine particular matter and other harmful compounds move beyond the 300 threshold, the Beijing Environmental Protection Monitoring Center considers them to fall into the so-called severe pollution range.
Specialists say that, all things considered, air quality plummeted in Beijing “courtesy” of emissions produced by facilities that burn coal, construction sites and the city's cars fleet.
They also expect that air quality in this Chinese city will take a turn for the better by Friday around midday.