Hard To Breathe In This Polluted Chinese City

There's a brisk west breeze in Vermont this Thursday and the air is fresh and clean, as it usually is in this part of the world.

In this photo from Getty Images, a man in Harbin,
China navigates a bike through the thick smog.  

Which means I can try to ignore the chill, and the occasional rain, sleet and snow sprinkles that have been coming down.

It could be worse.

In parts of China, the air pollution has been off the charts lately. Fine particulate pollution in the Chinese city of Harbin was 40 times worse than the level set by the World Health Organization. 

The pollution, with its obvious health hazard and extremely bad visibility in the smog, pretty much closed down the city of almost 11 million people earlier this week.

According to the Telegraph UK:

"You could feel the burning smell in the air, and on the second day the thick fog just blocked your waay, keeping you from seeing anytbing," said Song Ting, a 21-year-old student in Harbin. "It's still disgusting."

Zhao Yao, a 25-year-old IT engineer, said "You feel sick when you breathe. You can't see many people on the street now, and some people wear three masks when going out."

The air pollution happened because a high pressure system parked itself over the region of China most affected by the pollution.

The fatal smog in Donora, Pa. in October, 1948
(Walter Stein, AP)  

Such high pressure systems sometimes do that in the northern hemisphere, often in the autumn and early winter.

The wind is light under these high pressure systems, so pollutants have nowhere to go. And the air sinks beneath these systems, so the smoke and gunk can't just go up, up, up and away.

This weather pattern is called an inversion because the air is warmer high aloft than near the Earth's surface, which is opposite of the usual arrangement of decreasing temperature with height.

That warm air way up above the ground acts as a lid that keeps pollutants down here where people live.

Places with better pollution controls usually fare better than China in these scenarios. Here in Vermont, we sometimes get these stalled high pressure systems this time of year. Pollution from cars and wood stoves increases during these times, but it doesn't usually get dangerous for most people.

China, however, is a differnet story. People are firing up their heaters, fueled  by pollution-laden coal, power plants, also fueled by coal, add to the problem. So do the zillions of cars in the region. And the farmers burning the corn stubble in their recently harvested fields outside the city.

China isn't exactly the most transparent, forthcoming nation in the world, so it's hard to tell how many people got sick or died during this pollution episode. But the situation is dangerous, and I'm sure plenty of people have passed away, mostly people who have pre-existing conditions, such as heart and lung disease.

Historically, there have been episodes like this in the Western Hemisphere, before pollution control laws really came into vogue.

On October 27, 1948, a high pressure system, and its inversion, settled over Pennsylvania, including the valley town of Donora.

Donora, 25 miles south of Pittsburgh, had a zinc plant and a steel mill at the time, and pollutants from the factories hung over Donora.

At least 20 people died, and about 7,000 people got sick. Despite the obvious crisis unfolding in the town at the time, the owners of the zinc plant refused to temporarily shut it down. Hey, profits over people right?

In December, 1952, a similar smog hung over London for almost a week, causing almost 12,000 more deaths than would normally be expected over that time period.

Now China is having these smog attacks. I imagine the government there will be tightening pollution control laws pretty soon.