Having Trouble Breathing? Here's Why

Beijingers are used to dubious air quality, but last Saturday (November 7) was a corker even by Beijing standards. I went for a brief walk around midday and soon returned to my apartment feeling ill. My poor wife’s asthmatic lungs were wheezing like a set of bellows all weekend. The image above, taken by NASA last Friday (November 6), shows why.

According to shanghaiist the image reveals a “temperature inversion (i.e. smog bank) that has been trapped on China's coast for the past week.” Don’t worry though, according to the ever-reliable Global Times, it’s actually just fog blotting out our surrounds:

“Dense fog that enveloped the capital city has caused traffic authorities to shut down seven highways except the one to Badaling Great Wall, the China News Agency reported Sunday.”

Who would have guessed mist could make your lungs feel so bad?

While we’re on the subject of air pollution, Dr Richard posted this interesting, if slightly depressing, piece last Friday, about a personal air assessment project he undertook using a hand-held particle scanner.

Some of Dr Richard's finding were quite surprising. He found, for example that air pollution is not significantly worse beside main roads – it’s uniformly awful everywhere, including along tree-lined canals. Even on crystal clear days he found readings of particulate matter dangerously high. And living in high-rise seems to offer no protection – Dr Richard found the particulate matter readings outside his twenty-second story apartment to be exactly the same as on the ground floor.

On a brighter note, he did find indoor air to be considerably better than the atmosphere outside: “Indoor air keeps the worst pollution at bay, and readings were usually 50% of outdoor air.”

So stay indoors as much as possible on those really “foggy” days.