Watch the video here.

Beijing woke up to a sandstorm this Monday. At first, it looked like just another “bad air day,” as I tell my kids. Then my oldest noticed that the air is yellow, and that’s how we clued into our first sandstorm.

According to China Daily, dust from southern Mongolia traveled south, blanketing our streets until Beijing issued a yellow alert, the second-lowest severity level and the strongest in nearly a decade.

But how to explain it to kids? CoolKidFacts.com says “A sandstorm is caused when there is lots and lots of wind. The wind whips up heaps of sand if by magic and carries it away for [kilometers and kilometers],” (and that’s how it got from Mongolia to Beijing). “They can be quite something to see. The clouds that carry the dust can be huge, and rise to over 305 meters, with wind speeds of at least 40 kilometers.”

Although it might seem alarming to kids, a sandstorm is a good time to remind them how quickly winds can change and how to protect their lungs by wearing masks properly.

Don’t play outside, keep your air filters on high, and have fun indoors until the air is clearer and the sand has subsided.

For more helpful facts and hacks about living in Beijing, just follow the Jingkids International WeChat Channel. Scan our QR code and let us know what you need to know!

Sources: China Daily, CoolKidFacts.com
Images: Anna Pellegrin-Hartley, Cindy Marie Jenkins, Mina Yan, Uni You

Contrary to everything we know as grizzled veterans outfitted with face masks and a wary disposition, the latest news tells us that Beijing’s air quality improved so much over the course of 2017 that it is now the best it’s been in five years.

The local chapter of the Ministry of Environmental Protection makes the bold claim in its year-end report that describes air quality in the city that inspired the term “Airpocalypse” to have improved in several areas, sometimes drastically.

Last year saw a year-on-year increase of 28 additional days of excellent air quality while simultaneously decreasing the number of severely polluted days by 16 over the same period.

Also, daily levels of PM2.5 have decreased to just 58 micrograms per square meter on average, signifying a 21 percent year-on-year drop that meets the national cut-off level of 60.

Also decreasing are last year’s average levels of sulfur dioxide (by 21 percent to 8 micrograms per square meter), nitrous dioxide (by 4 percent to 46 micrograms per square meter), and PM10 (by 9 percent to 84 micrograms per square meter).

Compared to 2013, when record-taking first began, Beijing increased its excellent air quality days by 50 and decreased its average PM2.5 levels by 31 percent last year. Another remarkable statistic shows that November 2017’s PM2.5 levels experienced a 37 percent year-on-year decline.

But if you don’t want to follow the news, there’s another metric that demonstrates the improvement of Beijing’s air quality: falling sales for air filtration masks and air purifiers.

China News reports that retailers are complaining about sluggish sales for anti-smog equipment, some even saying they are unable to liquidate their products out of lack of interest.

This may all be too incredible to accept, but we have to add that Beijing hasn’t issued a red alert for smog since 2016. And, to appeal to your short-term memory, the capital has been relatively free of polluted days over the past few weeks.

The type of blue skies we’ve been recently experiencing are on par with what we’ve come to associate with the APEC or the OBOR summit, but the next such event – the state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron – isn’t scheduled until next week.

Replacing Beijing’s gray dreary skies for clear blue ones isn’t so farfetched when you consider the numerous policies implemented to promote a cleaner environment. Beijing has implemented (or has plans for) a ban on coal, a ban on fireworks, a ban on outdoor barbecues (remember that?), shut down factories, and implemented local restrictions on traffic and construction.

In fact, Beijing has been so driven to clean up its air that we’ve seen outlandish proposals of every kind that range from anti-smog share bikes to a smog-free tower to a plan that would have some 10 million residents standing outside waving a fan (no, we’re not kidding).

We’d probably be more optimistic for a cleaner Beijing if it weren’t for a daily ritual that had us waking up to a dreary, dull haze. That, as well as a public warning not to get our hopes up this winter that doesn’t seem that relevant anymore.

With prior reports suggesting that this winter would be a smoggy one for Beijing, we’re only too happy to welcome cold air masses to blow away the smog (like the -8 degree Celsius temperatures coming this Thursday). It’s too early to drop our guarded optimism, but we hope Beijing will lose its reputation for having the worst air in the world – or, at least, the solar system.

More stories from this author here.

E-Mail: charlesliu1 (at) qq (dot) com
Twitter: @Sinopath

Images: cnPam

Ever since I got my Laser Egg in 2015, I’ve been a little obsessed with the pollution levels inside my apartment. When we moved to our current apartment over the summer I was thrilled to see that on a “good” day of between 100-200, the Laser Egg would routinely read 4-16 US AQI in all rooms of our apartment. I was not thrilled to see that my living room filters struggled to keep up when it got above 200 outside. After some investigation with the Laser Egg, I found leaks at both patio doors and the main apartment door. We sealed the living room patio door with packing tape, but we need to access the kitchen patio on a regular basis, so sealing it for the winter wasn’t an option. I ended up putting a towel across the threshold to cut down on the pollution. It helped quite a bit. Until today we have been putting a long towel down to block the airflow of the front door, but it gets moved easily and is difficult to fit snugly against the door.

My family is visiting us and in the midst of reorganization projects, I realized that I had a long amount of spare fabric from an unfortunate purchase at Muxiyuan. My mother-in-law helped me measure and plan out a draft stopper. We measured the fabric against the door and decided to make it 3-4 cm wider than the door on both sides. Then we folded it over and tried to determine how big we wanted it once it was filled with rice. I measured it and marked the fabric down the length of it to make a guide-line for sewing. Folded, it was about 10 cm from the fold to the guide-line, making it roughly 20 cm in circumference. My MIL then put a few tack stitches in down the length of the fabric so it wouldn’t come unfolded at the tailors. The kitchen door one was a bit tricky, but we managed to get one to the right length after leaving about 2.5 cm length in extra fabric to allow us to sew.

I explained to my ayi what we wanted done, and she went off to the market to buy rice and have the tailor sew it. Our intention was to fill it and sew it shut when she got back, but she came back it was completely done. We put them in front of the doors and put the Laser egg down to test. I’m pretty pleased with the results!

I don’t remember how much I paid for the fabric years ago, but the sewing was 5 RMB and the rice was around 30 RMB for enough to fill both tubes. Well worth the cost as I’m currently typing this in an apartment with 37 US AQI when it is 420 outside!

For those less craftily minded, Taobao finally has a draft blocker available. Search in English for “Twin Draft Guard dust door stop” and there are several options that come up. They are only 90 cm wide, so it wouldn’t have worked as well for my door that is about a meter wide.

October has been an unusual month to say the least, one day it’s blue skies then the next is totally can’t see right in front of my nose situation. The National Meteorological Center has warned that moderate to intense levels are to be experienced for the next few days till Sunday according to China Daily.

Next week, a second round of smog is scheduled around October 28. This is one of those times when the predication made turns out to be false. During these periods visibility is expected to fall between 2-6km. October has already had four hazardous levels of smoggy weather, which are not usually expected till later on in Winter. The reason for this is that Beijing has experienced a lower wind speed that would normally help clear away the smog.

This smog sent jitters to the central government when a directive was issued that local public schools and non-essential governments to be closed during the APEC summit in November in hopes that the smog levels will be bearable. Here is the full story.

Photos: Kentaro IEMOTO@Tokyo (Flickr)

We may be enjoying the fourth consecutive day of clear skies and low AQI in Beijing but, along with death and taxes, there is one other certainty in life – the smog will return.

The pollution apps that most of us rely on (mainly as a reminder of how much we are damaging ourselves) provide an invaluable service. If the AQI is 500 outside, it’s great to know so that I can stay inside strapped to an air purifier. But that’s a bit like finding out there’s going to be a thunderstorm via the fact that your barbeque has been extinguished. It’s normally a bit too late to be helpful.

What if I need to know whether tomorrow will be clear for that hypothetical cycle ride I’ve been planning?

Now there’s an app to help – Beijing Smogcast. Created by geochemist Dustin Grzesik, who used Beijing’s weather patterns to create a predictive forecast, the app tells you when to expect the next bout of clean air. It’s about as simple as you can get (it merely tells you when the next clear day and morning will be) and the three-sentence summary is as straightforward as the one you can find Banshirne website (see screenshot above).

Nonetheless, if you’re trying to pick a day for that family outing and would rather not be accosted by an apocalyptic cloud of PM2.5, then this could be incredibly useful information. It’s already popular with the cycling community, but if the science behind the forecast is sound then it could be the beginning of something very, very useful for all Beijingers.

The app, currently only available on Android, is still in its infancy, with the BBC reporting that there have only been a few hundred downloads so far. This means that we’re not sure how useful or accurate it will actually be. If it’s anything like the weather forecast (which it relies on to make its own predictions) then it will probably be correct some of the time and certainly more useful than nothing.

Beijing Smogcast is available in English and Chinese from www.banshirne.com or through Google Play. We’d love to know how useful it proves, and whether it’s accurate enough to rely on. So if you download the app please do get in touch with your thoughts in the comments section below or on oscarholland@beijing-kids.com.

Can you avoid breathing in so much of that dreaded PM2.5 and still look good while doing it? Infipure thinks so.

A couple of MIT grads at Infipure, an air pollution mask startup based in Beijing, have combined the aesthetic benefits of this:

with the functionality of this:

to make this:

And we’re pretty excited. Tech in Asia has all the good details on these "invisible" Infipure masks that are supposed to be nearly unnoticeable when you wear them and able to filter up to 99 percent of the PM2.5 particles that you breathe in through your nose. We’re just hoping the masks actually work because they’re certainly more low profile than these. They’re also affordable – you can buy eight filters on Taobao for RMB 21.60.

What do you think? Will this change your mind about wearing an air pollution mask in Beijing?

Photo: The Wu’s Photo Land, kitchener.lord, and David Barrie on Flickr

This post originally appeared on our sister website the Beijinger on April 22, 2013. Click here for the original.

It’s no news that Beijing is polluted. Especially in the last few months, we have been bombarded by horrible figures and data about air pollution levels. Unfortunately, there is another figure coming from the China Meteorological Administration.

At the beginning of April, they announced that the city have just experienced the smoggiest March in 52 years. Many meteorologists have attributed this phenomenon to the presence of high air pressure all over the country. This led the air (and the pollution in it) to become denser and move towards the ground.

High air pressure can actually increase the perception of pollution, but is not considered one of its causes, which are what the country needs to fight. Nowadays most part of air pollution comes from the burning of fossil fuel (such as oil, gas and coal) on huge scale.

Pollution is not just a Chinese issue. Many countries need to deal with this problem, but a new analysis by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) showed that 40 percent (or 1.2 million people) of the world’s premature deaths attributable to air pollution occurred in China. How will this frightening figure reflect on the lives of China’s inhabitants?

Following the HEI report on April 5, the Natural Resources Defense Council Blog (NRDC) posted an article analyzing the effects of air pollution on children and the elderly in China.

Kids are naturally more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. Their lungs are not fully developed, so they cannot properly fight infections and it’s easier for pollution to damage their lungs. Children are also more exposed to pollution, as they usually spend more time outdoor than adults.

The elderly are also particularly at risk from air pollution. Their body’s functions are weaker and not able to effectively expel harmful substances in the air. This increases the possibility of them getting heart and lung disease, and may consequently raise the number of premature deaths.

As the public becomes more aware of the problem, the government should also take a stand to fight the rise of pollution and concentrate on trying to solve this problem that puts the Chinese population at risk.

Photo by mkorcuska (Flickr)

Though (relatively) blue skies are back, the astronomical AQI figures from last weekend’s heavy smog reignited the debate about the real and perceived risks of air pollution. In a thought-provoking post on My Health Beijing, beijingkids columnist and BJU doctor Dr. Richard Saint Cyr examines the health impact of smoking cigarettes versus exposure to PM 2.5 from air pollution.

At first, the verdict doesn’t look good for smokers. Dr. Richard cites an email exchange with C. Arden Pope of Brigham Young University, one of the world’s leading experts on air pollution:

[Dr. Richard]: Even with a PM2.5 of 880 ug/m3 recorded last weekend in Beijing, that still only comes out to ~14 mg of PM2.5 per 24 hours, barely the equivalent of one cigarette, which has 12 mg on average. Despite the scary news reports about our pollution emergency, is it still accurate to say this is still not even the same risk as 2 cigarettes, and any casual smoker every day is exposing his heart and lungs to much more dangerous levels than even today’s air pollution?

Pope: Yes. Cigarette smoking is an incredibly effective way to expose an individual’s body to very high levels of harmful fine particulate matter and combustion-related nasty stuff. High levels of ambient air pollution are an effective way to expose whole populations to harmful fine particulate matter and associated combustion-related pollutants. These high levels of air pollution that we are seeing in Beijing may be similar, in terms of excess risk, to smoking a cigarette or two per day.

Last week, a Facebook friend posted about an earlier entry on My Health Beijing, setting off a firestorm of comments in the process:

Smokers complaning about Beijing air pollution: you are a special kind of dumb.

Even if the pollution had stayed at its 755 [AQI] peak for an entire day, the damage to a normal adult’s lungs would have been equivalent to about 1/6 of a cigarette. An average day isn’t even 1/6 of a cigarette.

Next time you open your mouth to moan, how about you stuff it with a delicious Zhongnanhai instead?

One person responded with the argument that smoking is a lifestyle choice, while being exposed to hazardous levels of air pollution is not. Actually, it is, says Dr. Richard. Living in Beijing is what he calls a “modifiable risk factor,” which also includes behaviors such as smoking, eating poorly, and not doing enough exercise.

In the end, the risk of air pollution is all relative. It matters far more whether you fulfill seven health measures set out by the American Heart Association.

1. Not smoking
2. Having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or less
3. Getting enough physical exercise (more than 150 minutes per week of moderate activity)
4.  Eating a diet that includes three or more servings of fruits and veggies daily

The remaining measures are too technical for your average Joe (e.g. having a total cholesterol level of less than 200mg/dL or milligrams per deciliter), but the idea is that lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar – combined with the above-mentioned criteria – all contribute to a lower risk of mortality from all diseases of the circulatory system.

So the next time Beijing experiences another high-AQI day, stop and consider all the facts before jumping to any conclusions about the effects that air pollution may have on your health. That’s one way to breathe easier.

Related posts: What’s That Air Purifier Really Doing for You?, Smogasbord: Everybody Is Talking about Beijing’s Bad Air

Photo by ernop via Flickr

In addition to an alarming number of respiratory ailments in children and a mad rush on air filter masks, Beijing’s terrible air pollution these past few days (quite possibly the worst on record according to Greenpeace) has unleashed a torrent of online commentary.

Beijing’s most popular English health blogger and BeijingKids health columnist Dr Richard is featured in a video interview with Chris Buckley, owner of Torana Clean Air Center, talking about how best to help your kids deal with air pollution.

Meanwhile Forbes has a rather smug commentary about how Beijing’s pollution problem makes Shanghai look all the more superior (my head may be swimming and my lungs filled with soot, but having spent some incredibly boring stretches of time in our southern rival, I beg to differ).

Unfortunately it’s hard to make a strong case for Beijing when looking at this map, posted by Twitter user @Tualatrix showing just how bad Beijing’s AQI has been in comparison with other Chinese cities (note the "714" next to our "北京"):

Tealeafnation has a roundup of sark-y tweets and weibo posts that prove there is much black humor to be found in the dankness:

@老头子陳先森 tweets on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, “I am so glad that my ex-girlfriend lives in Beijing.”

Chinahearsay also pokes some fun at the typically clumsy official pronouncements from the higher-ups concerning the ongoing air pollution problem:

Some foreign critics of the BS Index have openly questioned the assumptions of Zone 1 recommendations. They suggest that very low PM readings are, in fact, very positive outcomes that should be encouraged and certainly not labeled “not optimal.” Professor Hao Hao, head of the Smog Department of the China Academy of Astrology, Elixirs and Feng Shui (AEF) strongly disagrees:

‘These critics simply do not understand China, and their challenging of our historical traditions is deeply offensive. Moreover, everyone knows that carbon dioxide is a natural substance necessary to sustain life on the planet. To quote U.S. Senator James Inhofe, “CO2 is plant food!” If the PM level drops too low, there could be catastrophic consequences.’

If you’re a number-cruncher then Beijing-based American clean energy expert and engineer Vance Wagner’s livefrombeijing blog (VPN needed) should appeal with posts like "Proof of Linear Extrapolation of embassy pm2.5-aqi relationship above 500" and "Demystifying air quality numbers" – not necessarily light reading if you’re numerically challenged (like me) but insightful all the same.

Meanwhile The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report has a slideshow of photos showing just how ugly it’s been out there and BeijingCream points us to a Bloomberg piece (VPN needed) citing an alarming increase in the number of cardiac arrest patients in Beijing emergency rooms since last Friday.  

Finally, and most importantly, if you’re waiting with baited breath to exhale (and inhale), keep your fingers crossed that the winds will pick up and blow this gunk away on Wednesday.