Since the US embassy in Beijing began tweeting hourly pollution reports last year, I – along with many other smog watchers – have been horrified at the frequency of "bad" and "hazardous" readings.
But this week, the depth and murkiness of the haze was so appalling that the automated system briefly entered the realm of black comedy with a "crazy bad" analysis of our air.
The outlandish description appeared on the @beijingair Twitter account late yesterday when levels of PM2.5 tiny particulate matter surged past 500, about 20 times higher than the guideline issued by the World Health Organisation.
The "crazy bad" terminology – which was at odds with the normally sober and scientific language of the Twitter account – appeared to have been a joke embedded in the embassy's monitoring program and triggered by a reading that was off the normal scale.
US officials quickly deleted "crazy bad" and replaced it with the term "beyond index", but not before the original message was widely retweeted by shocked Beijingers.
The wilder wording was probably closer to capturing the danger posed by pollution at these levels, which has been linked to brain damage, bronchial disease and heart attacks.
Several residents said "crazy bad" was refreshingly frank, particularly given the reluctance of Chinese officials to disclose real-time pollution data or any measurements of ozone or PM2.5 particulate matter.
US embassy spokesman, Richard Buangan, said the "crazy bad" term was a mistake that has been corrected. "It was an inadvertent humorous moment," he said. "We thought it might blow up in our faces. But looking at the Twitter feed, we are seen as heroes."
Beijing's air quality monitoring office declined comment. An official said there was insufficient research to explain why the pollution haze has been so murky this week.
The culprit is likely to be a combination of weather, traffic and coal-burning power stations. With car ownership surging, the government said last week that China's vehicles discharged 51m tonnes of pollutants every year.
The smog will not have been helped by the massive switch-on of northern China's heating supply last week. Public heating – mostly fuelled by coal – begins on 15 November and ends on 15 March regardless of the temperature.
One of my colleagues has taken to wearing a facemask on his commute through the streets. The Guardian's research assistant, Cui Zheng, prefers not to think about the air we all have to breathe. "I had to stop following the @Beijingair tweets. They were too depressing," she explained.
The government insists it will step up measures to deal with pollution in its next five-year plan, but past efforts have failed to eradicate the haze despite reported increases in the number of "blue sky days".
As I write, the air quality reading has improved to a mere "hazardous" but with the world outside grey and the lungs aching inside, "crazy bad" still feels entirely appropriate.
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
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