Take My Breath Away

Everyone warned me that the pollution would be a constant fug of disappointment in the Shanghai landscape.  Up until January, that was a pretty big overstatement.

But with the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays and factories working overtime to produce gifts, biscuits, tat in all shades of red, all that swiftly changed.  Pollution levels are measured all across the city on the hour and flashed through satellites to smart phoned denizens of this great metropolis.

Based on these readings, days are RAGged (for my non-teacher friends that means Red, Amber and Greened) to suggest how likely it is that the air might kill you.  As you would expect, the Chinese government takes a relatively liberal stance on what 'good' air means.  As you would expect, the American government likes to throw environmental health tantrums and so much as a burplet from a factory sets the whole scale on meltdown.

The big number is called the 'AQI' or 'Air Quality Index'.  According to the US scale: 0-50=good; 51-100=moderate; 101-150=unhealthy for sensitive groups; 151-200=unhealthy for everyone.  Beyond this=wait for the apocalypse.

And that's not even the scary part.  Because the real number to watch here is the PM2.5 particulate.  This reading refers to particles in the air smaller than 2.5 micrometers which are particularly dangerous because they like to hang out in the gas exchange part of the human lung.  Sometimes these particles find homes in other organs or arteries and you've got some serious trouble to the tune of pulmonary disease or cancer (with long-term exposure).  The Chinese government suggests that a reading anywhere between 0-35 is 'good' and green.  The American government's green reading hovers between 0-12.  A US red reading hovers between 55-150.  Today, we're actually on something beyond red, called 'hazardous', something to which both the US and China agree with.  

Last Sunday, the reading toppled 418.

I've taken to doing as the Chinese do.  This is my PM2.5 mask:

It comes with a changeable filter that i've been assured 'most likely doesn't work.'  I've just managed to shake a pollution-started cold that's lasted nearly two weeks; thus, i'm desperate. Plus, a little placebo never did any harm.  

Masked up to his eyeballs, Paul has taken to screaming 'I KILLED THE BATMAN!' at the top of his lungs across the flat.  I guess we've all got our ways of coping.