Clean Air A 'Luxury' In Beijing's Pollution Zone
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143214875/clean-air-a-luxury-in-beijings-pollution-zone?ft=1&f=1025
Picture: The air in Beijing now (top), compared to the way clean air should look (bottom).
Article: On the way to school, my kids and I play a guessing game: How polluted is the air today? We use an app linked to the air pollution monitor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and we try to guess the day's exact level on the Air Quality Index, and whether the air is dangerous.
These days, chances are that it could well be. For more than half of the past 60 days, the air pollution has hit levels hazardous to human health. Experts estimate long-term exposure to such pollution could reduce life expectancy by as much as five years. But I don't tell the kids that.
Living inside the pollution zone, those daily measurements determine how my family spends its days. Whenever the levels hit "very unhealthy," we keep the kids indoors and refuse to let them take part in outdoor activities, no matter how much whining might ensue. When to wear a pollution mask, when to stay indoors, it's all become crucial knowledge, even for our 4-year-old.
Reflection: I find this article to be very shocking because I never realized just how polluted Beijing was. And just the fact that the article talks about their 4 year old child worrying about these issues is startling. I couldn't even imagine how horrible it would be to deal with terror everyday that you might get sick from the very air your breathing. Beijing needs to slow industry and technology production before everyone in Beijing becomes ill.
Questions:
1. After reading this article, do you think you would ever visit Beijing?
2. If you could give Beijing any advice what would it be?
3. Would you ever let your family be exposed to such poor air quality?
4. If you could do anything to help Beijing, would you?
5. What would your life be like if we had air quality issues like in Beijing, in Horsham?
This article is terrifying! The fact that a family and children are playing a game involving a guess of how polluted an area is, is just odd. That is like me and my family guessing how many people died yesterday. The picture comparison is also scary. When I hiked on the Appalachian trail 5 years ago I could see the roller coaster from six flags and now I can not because of the air.
ReplyDelete1) I still would love to visit to bejing, but who would have thought it would be a health risk to go there? I'm not sure that the elderly would want to go there. I certainly would not bring a small child either. You if to think about what is more important.