Finally! I just discovered a great site by a family doctor in Beijing (close enough!) with all the info you need — like what to do — about the appalling infuriating horrifying confounding oppressive chewable inexcusable damnable lethal ghastly hideous depressing atrocious illiberal obscene foul nose-burning abominable face-coating heinous lì hai monstrous odious execrable unholy [they-don't-make-strong-enough-negative-descriptors] air pollution. For example:
- How Bad Is It, Really?
- Why you should Close Your Windows at Night
- About air purifiers
- Pollution slideshow
- Using the Beijing Air Quality Index (AQI) (why “200″ is 4x worse than “100″)
Call me a pampered whiny rich foreigner if you want, I don’t care; I want to liiiiiive!
And please, by all means, you’re welcome to add adjectives to my list (but keep it PG!). Sometimes it just feels good to vent to get it off your chest, especially since you can’t vent to get it out of your chest.
I’ll add a photo later if I can bring myself to take one (through tears, no doubt).
Other posts about Tianjin’s indecent pollution:
Canada:
China:
Taiwan:
The States:
Brazil:
UK:
*sigh*… depressing. I wonder how much of my life is shortened by living in TJ for a year. Maybe I should just be lame and wear a mask all day long. Is TJ still the 3rd most polluted city in the world?
Maybe just returning to TJ from Vancouver makes it seem worse, but I swear it’s actually gotten worse since after the Olympics.
Maybe you can move to Derek’s town. He said it’s nice….
maybe when we come, we can all go and check it out :)
Hey Joel, I just found where my computer was still logged in as you in the comments. I changed it. Is this better?
And, of course, there are many places in China with far worse air pollution than Beijing!
yeah, plus different kinds of pollution are worse in different areas, too. I’ve heard that the air is particularly bad near the major coal producing areas, but in other provinces the water is supposedly worse. When my students bring up an example of a polluted place in China they often mention XJ out west. We’ve all heard of “c@ncer villages”, right?
Tianjin definitely isn’t the worst. But even though we know that and you get used to seeing and smelling the smog when you step outside, anytime I actually stop to think about it it’s still amazing.
[...] Everything you wish you didn’t know about air pollution in China [...]
Still 100% convinced to raise your baby in China?
ha, well, we’ve never been 100% convinced. But we’ve also always planned to move out of Tianjin, so hopefully that will help (TJ isn’t the worst, but it’s still worse than average for air pollution). Hopefully we’ll end up somewhere more human-friendly. and we’re taking measures in the meantime.