The World Newser is World News' daily blog. Here, you'll find our staff's thoughts on the day's news and the way we build our broadcast. Plus, we'll share reports from our team of correspondents in the field, as well as producers behind-the-scenes.
RECENT POSTS
- Clem's Chronicles: Afghanistan/WH State Dinner/Holiday Travel
- Photos: White House State Dinners Through the Years
- Are We Becoming A Nation of Know-Nothings?
- Quotes of the Day: 'President Obama has the information he wants... to make his decision'
- Clem's Chronicles: Jobs/Afghanistan/Health Care Reform/Deficit
- Child Safety: Crib Recall and Other Recently Recalled Kids Products
- You Buying Less This Holiday?
- President Lou Dobbs?
- The Democrats Need LBJ
- Another Vampire Blockbuster? Why?
- Documenting the Planet's Demise -- One Striking Photograph at a Time
- President Obama Answers Questions From Anti-Castro Blogger
WORLD NEWSER CATEGORIES
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
US Embassy in Beijing Twitters Pollution Levels
June 30, 2009 9:13 AM
ABC's Beth Loyd reports from Beijing:
The United States embassy here has installed its very own air quality monitor and has been releasing reports to its staff. And now, on a Twitter feed called “BeijingAir” anyone can check the air quality in Beijing, updated every hour. And not surprisingly, the levels differ quite significantly from those released by the Chinese government.
The state-run English language China Daily reported the story today on the front page. China Daily says that from 1am to 2pm yesterday, the embassy monitoring station listed the air quality as “unhealthy,” while Beijing’s EPA said the average reading in the district where the embassy is located was “moderate.” And on June 18, when the air was a soupy fog, Beijing reported the pollution levels as “slightly polluted,” while the embassy’s “BeijingAir” Twitter feed reported the reading as in the “hazardous” range for seven hours.
The embassy is monitoring the levels itself out of concern for its staff. “This monitor is a resource for the health of the Embassy community,” embassy spokesperson Susan Stevenson told ABC News. “Citywide analysis cannot be done, however, on data from a single machine.”
Also, the embassy machine is based on the United States’ EPA standards. In America, the EPA measures particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM 2.5) that get into lungs and the bloodstream, while China measures particles less than 10 micrometers (PM 10).
“PM 25 are referred to as ‘fine’ particles and are believed to pose the largest health risks,” Stevenson told ABC News. The system allows the embassy “to compare against U.S. standard measures.”
The bigger particles are, for the most part, less dangerous because they can usually be expelled from the body by coughing.
Stevenson says since the US embassy has the data, they decided to share it with the wider American community here in Beijing and Twitter is “the most efficient way of delivering the information automatically.”
June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (5)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Wonder how long it will be before the Chinese govt. demands the embassy shuts down their air quality monitor.......
Posted by: SearamblerOne | Jun 30, 2009 11:26:25 AM
as an engineer, i would say that the picture in this article is quite misleading. the towers in the background are cooling towers, which are releasing steam. by themselves, they are actually environmentally friendly items. this article inaccurately portrays the cooling towers as what the public would normally think are nuclear reactors, due to cartoon representations.
Posted by: UCBerkeleyStudent | Jun 30, 2009 12:55:29 PM
Some of those links don't lead back to what they are supposed to. "A Twitter Feed called BeijingAir" links to "Iranians take risk to protest"
Posted by: ecz | Jun 30, 2009 11:16:32 PM
The sentence in the article reading "And not surprisingly, the levels differ quite significantly from those released by the Chinese government" is rather unfair. Of course few trust the Chinese government; I lived in Tianjin and Beijing 1985-87, Macau 1990-94 (when it was still a colony of Portugal), and Shunde, Guangdong 2000-2001 (on the Guangzhou-Macau highway), so I'm well acquainted with Beijing's propaganda.
But your article itself later says "the embassy machine is based on the United States’ EPA standards. In America, the EPA measures particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM 2.5) that get into lungs and the bloodstream, while China measures particles less than 10 micrometers." In other words, this comes close to an apples-and-oranges "comparison." Of *course* you'll get different results when you are using such vastly different standards. It's got to be 4X's larger than we're measuring at our embassy before it even starts to show up on China's worry-radar. I'm not defending China's lax standards, and for that they're fair game. But it's pushing the envelope, at the very least, to imply they're flat-out lying when, by the standard they're using (inadequate though that standard probably is -- almost certainly is), they're not.
Look, I'm no apologist for the Old Men of Zhong Nan Hai and their underlings, but neither am I going to go to a stretch to criticize them -- heck, they provide WAY too much low-hanging fruit to throw at them without a stretch! (I'm beginning to wonder if ABC has an institutional equivalent of the psyche of a stalker when it comes to China!)
Posted by: Mekhong Kurt | Jul 1, 2009 3:08:18 AM
Sorry, lived in Beijing and Tianjin until 1988, not 1987. Typo.
Posted by: Mekhong Kurt | Jul 1, 2009 3:09:06 AM
Post a comment
