Airpocalypse 2013 - smog in Shanghai - 包咳死

What's visible of the sun at 2pm on a smoggy day in the Forbidden City, Beijing

           It's no secret that the pollution levels in China are reaching dire levels, and that despite pressure from its residents and internationally, not too much seems to be changing. The government has tried to implement a few rules, such as cars with odd numbers on their registration plates only being able to drive on every other day, and vice versa, or some other rules like, cars with registration plates from other provinces only allowed to drive in the city within restricted hours. However, none of these seem to be making much of a difference, in fact, they appear to be getting worse every year. The measurement of the levels of pollution is given by the Air Quality Index (AQI), based on the concentration of air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and particulate matter (PM). The latter is frequently mentioned, because the particles around 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) and 10 micrometers (PM10) are thought to be responsible for the increased incidence of lung and other cancers in China's most polluted cities. In particular, PM2.5 is seen as the biggest problem, since its small size means that it can penetrate deeper into the lungs and is cleared less easily by the natural movement of mucus. 

        A collaborative study between American, Israeli and Chinese researchers recently published in PNAS estimated that on average, people who live in northern China have their life expectancy lowered by 5.5 years. It is estimated by the WHO that in 2010, 223,000 people died from pollution-linked lung cancer, and there must be many more from other cardio-respiratory related illnesses. Recently, the world's youngest lung cancer patient at eight years of age has been identified in China, and undoubtedly, the air pollution must have contributed to this tragic event.

          For the many smartphone users in China, there are a range of air quality apps which help to monitor the situation and give advice on which days are suitable for outdoor activities. They normally give two readings - one for the PM2.5 and one for the overall AQI, which is a combination of all the molecules mentioned. The WHO states that a healthy range for living creatures should be around 20 - 50, but it hovers around 200 in Shanghai on a daily basis. 

          When I first arrived, it took a few days to get used to, for example when I first ventured to find a local HSBC ATM (they are not as common as you would think, given that they have "Shanghai" in the acronym), I was recommended to take a taxi, but I looked on Google Maps and saw that it was only a 20 minute walk, so I thought "How bad could it be?" and set off in the general direction, thinking that I could take a scenic route in order to discover and familiarise myself with the local area. I quickly realised that there was not much of any importance in this direction, and that the main roads with quadruple lanes on each side were very busy, and tickled my lungs in a unsettlingly unfamiliar way that I had not experienced before. Generally, I felt like I was short of breath, and wanted to cough every time I tried to take a breath in. I decided to avoid walking along main roads in future, and became a metro devotee.
         I asked the others in the lab about whether they ever wore any masks, for which China is so famous, and they all laughed, saying that they thought it was unnecessary and ineffective. Generally, Chinese people seem to be more blasé about their attitude to the smog, just accepting it as a necessary evil to help them on their way to becoming a fully developed country. Some even boast that the Chinese immune system is so resilient due to the high levels of pollution. This is in contrast to the attitude I found in Korea, where people were ready to whip out their face-masks as soon as levels went near 100 AQI. 
          But the end result was that probably due to their influence, I never bought one when I first arrived. It was surprisingly easy to get used to the basal level of smog, and I didn't notice it after a while, even though average daily level that we have is considered "Unhealthy" by the WHO. It was not so bad on campus anyway, where the traffic was quite low, and even then, the smog was usually better in Shanghai compared to an inland city like Beijing, because we at least had the proximity to the coast and its ocean breezes to help dispel the particles. However, I was warned that in general the smog tends to get worse during the winter, when poorer people start burning coal and other materials in order to keep warm, because like other south east Asian areas, Shanghai buildings tend not to have central heating, and most people rely on switching their air conditioners to warm setting in order to keep warm at night. 
        So I got used to the smog and didn't really notice it too much, until the day came which we started referring to as "airpocalypse" (although there have been several of these in a range of different cities around China), which was such an unusually bad event in Shanghai that it ended up making the news, even internationally. We had originally planned a trip out on December 6th to the other campus, but as we woke to a thick, grey haze, we knew that our plans had to be cancelled. I knew it was bad as I walked to the lab in the morning and the visibility seemed to be ridiculously low. It reminded me of scuba diving in the murky quarry of Stoneycove during our training course in Leicester, where you couldn't really see where you were going til you got there! Visibility estimates were hovering around less than 20 m, and it was reported that apparently some people when they first woke that morning thought that they'd lost their sight! We all watched out AQI apps for any change in levels, but it just got worse as the day went on. It started at around 450 at breakfast, and by lunchtime it had broken the 500 mark, which was above the currently available scale - so the pollution was literally off the scale!

AQI levels going "beyond index" levels in Shanghai, while it stayed relatively normal in Beijing. WHO guidelines say 20 - 50 AQI is a healthy range!

          It turned out that due to freak weather conditions, including an unusual lack of wind meant that the daily smog that the city churns out into the air wasn't cleared properly from the whole area around Shanghai, up to other major cities, such as Nanjing, which incidentally was the only place in the world that was (slightly) worse off during those couple of days. The biggest insult of all was that contrary to the normal situation, Beijing seemed to be doing really well.

The view of the smog by NASA Satellites

          The internet community was furiously commenting away on all the social networking sites, and it even made it onto international sites like 9GAG:

Before and after shots of facemasks used in Shanghai made it onto 9GAG

           There was discussion of outrage at why the government wasn't doing anything. Some people in the lab thought the government ought to take proactive action to protect its citizens, such as artificially inducing rain, to knock all the particles out of the air. But hilariously, the government instead responded by politely informing the public of all the benefits of smog! 
1. It unifies the Chinese people. 
2. It makes China more equal. 
3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development. 
4. It makes people funnier. 
5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like meteorology and the English word haze).
          This obvious exercise in "saving face" was regarded as completely ridiculous by many! Whilst I partly agree with point number 3, in general, it's a pained and transparent whilst weak-hearted attempt at placating the public. The only real positive I can think of from this spell of bad weather is that it provided an interesting few days for photography. People captured some spectacular images of the city during this time. This is one of my favourites:

Photography of the smog. View on Instagram or more awesome photos here

          It really did get worse throughout the day , and by the time we were making our way to the canteen for lunch, it was so bad that you could see it clouding up the dining hall. Even in the lab, it was impossible to keep the smell out, and it felt a bit smoky indoors. That didn't seem to stop some people who were still lighting up for a cigarette outside, obeying the call of their nicotine addiction. This completely flew in the face of logic for the amount of damage the smog must have been doing to everyone's lungs already. 
          When I got to my dorm in the evening, it turned out that the powers that be in the University decided that they ought to provide us with free face masks. My labmates later, dismissed these, since they could could immediately see that they were completely ineffectual, since the holes were too big to be able to filter out the damage causing PM 2.5. Since the free masks weren't given out to the home students, I do think that this was pretty much an exercise in guānxì (关系), to make the international students feel like they were being looked after by the Chinese university. I did get my hands on a proper mask the next day which my labmate Lu kindly helped me to buy from taobao, but my overall impression of the mask experience wasn't really that good. The mask got steamed up very quick, so it was moist and uncomfortable to breathe inside it, and people with glasses often complained that it made their glasses fog up. And even though the one Lu chose seemed good quality and had a bendable metal strip across the nose which could be adjusted to your face to create a tight seal, it was nigh on impossible to get it exactly correct, short of sticking it to my nose with glue. So as a result, most of the time there was still a tiny little slit through which the outside air could go in due to the vacuum created by my breathing. So sometimes I got frustrated with the fact that it was ineffectual and just took it off. But I saw many others with make shift masks that had much larger gaps. Optimism in the face of logic!
                It was a hard night's sleep as well, since despite closing all the windows and doors, the tiny particles still infiltrated the room through any gaps and slits. Thankfully, the following morning, it had seemed to die down, although there was now a huge white fog everywhere. 

The fog that greeted us the next day after the airpocalypse

          It initially had people worried as they woke, but the AQI was moving back down to it's previously normal levels. It turned out this was just fog. 
         Overall, it was just this one isolated incident during my stay. Some guys who live in the north of China said that in their home town it was like this every day in the winter, so it could have been worse. And it also meant that I got to learn a cool new Chinese phrase: 包咳死 (Bāo hāi sǐ) - "Guaranteed to cough to death"!