NASA Releases Orbital Photos of Beijing's Air Pollution

skade88 writes "This story should remind us all that air pollution controls are not just about addressing global warming. They also help us have cleaner air and fewer health problems resulting from smog and haze. Starting earlier this month, Beijing, China started having worse than normal air pollution issues. On January 14, 2013 the U.S. embassy's air pollution sensors in Beijing found the density of the most dangerous small air particles, PM 2.5, at 291 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The World Health Organization's guidelines for air pollution state that PM 2.5 above 25 micrograms per cubic meter of air is dangerous to a person's health. To put the problem into perspective, NASA has released two orbital photos of Beijing showing before-and-during images of the air pollution. The photo from January 4 shows parts of Beijing still visible from space. The photo from January 14 shows nothing but a huge, thick cloud of haze with no buildings visible."

Re:Oh snap!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you meant to say is "Nothing to see here, move along."

"meat vacuums"

[hedley]

In a rather Bender-esque way, the literal translation from Mandarin for its populi (the PM2.5 breathers) is "Meat vacuums", and not in a good way I might add.

H.

Re:Oh snap!

[Moblaster]

I remember from my youth that's what LA used to look like in the 70s. Those were back in the days we had to walk 5 miles to school each day in the dirty gray snow. Course once we realized it was not actually snow, but several inches of dusty sooty crud, we stopped wearing our parkas.

Hiding from Space?

[bobstreo]

Go go gadget smokescreen!

This is deliberate policy.

[conspirator23]

China has replaced their "One Child" program of population control with a new "One Lung" policy.If you can't get rid of the babies, at least you can weed out the weak, the old, and the heavy breathers.

iSmog

[Tablizer]

nuf sed