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Andy Wong / AP
Tan Liang, a resident of Beijing, prepares to take readings on a PM2.5 detector outside his residential compound in Beijing, China, on Dec. 3, 2011.
The Associated Press reports from BEIJING:
Armed with a device that looks like an old transistor radio, some Beijing residents are recording pollution levels and posting them online. It's an act that borders on subversion.
The government keeps secret all data on the fine particles that shroud China's capital in a health-threatening smog most days. But as they grow more prosperous, Chinese are demanding the right to know what the government does not tell them: just how polluted their city is.
"If people know what their air is like, they are more likely to take action," said Wang Qiuxia, a researcher at local environment group Green Beagle, who shows interested residents how to test pollution on a locally made monitoring machine. Continue reading.
Andy Wong / AP
Tan Liang carries a PM2.5 detector towards a garbage-burning facility located near his residential compound in Beijing on Dec. 3, 2011.
Andy Wong / AP
Wang Qiuxia, right, a volunteer from an environmental group, teaches Cheng Jing, left, how to operate the PM2.5 detector in Beijing on Dec. 7, 2011.
Related content:
Chinese are growing more outspoken about the "fog," now accurately calling it "smog," covering cities like Beijing.
Leave a Comment:
First!
Haha.
Who did they think they were fooling when your can't see more than a mile and your eye's are watering and your lungs are burning.
It is easier to convince someone who has not known 'clean' air.
In economics,
Costs innovate industry,
Balanced by people.
That's what it used to look like in in East LAX, you couldn't see down the street and on really bad days you couldn't see across the street back in the 70's. China needs environmental regulation and standards in its industry's, maybe they could eventually "Lift the Fog".
I was in Ningbo last fall which is not considered a 'big' city and you could chew the air.