# Smog in the City



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Is smog becoming a major problem in your city?

Most of *Hong Kong*'s smog is blown across the border from factories in southern China. Critics have also argued that local power stations should switch to cleaner alternative fuels besides coal. 










On many days, visibility is significantly reduced due to the smog.


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## c0kelitr0 (Jul 6, 2005)

in Manila...smog is a big problem from Monday-Saturday due to smog caused by heavy volume of traffic...on Sundays though, it's significantly clearer...


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## joshgenz (Apr 15, 2006)

yeah i think in my country it is a problem as the polution is almost everywhere


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## Brett (Oct 26, 2004)

No Smog problem in Victoria. Although its on of the reasons i moved away from the Toronto area.


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## bay_area (Dec 31, 2002)

With 6.7 Million automobiles, The San Francisco Bay Area should be very smoggy, but the strong pacific ocean currents push our smog to The Central Valley and so while The Bay Area often has pristine air quality, Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto are just under a thick brown soup of smog. Sorry Sactown :runaway:

But we do get smog sometimes.


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## LuckyLuke (Mar 29, 2005)

Fortunately we don't have any Smog problem


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## Marcanadian (May 7, 2005)

There's some smog in the summer time. There was a lot last year.


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## rt_0891 (Mar 13, 2005)

There's smog further down the Fraser Valley, but by downtown Vancouver, it's pretty much clear.


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## Frog (Nov 27, 2004)

in my small town where I live now it is not a big problem but last summer there were warnings about pollution levels and advised people to avoid walking. shame because I love walking  
it is not suprising though because it is very car orientated here


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## Zaqattaq (Nov 17, 2004)

none


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## Daniel_Portugal (Sep 24, 2005)

some smog in some areas... other areas are clean


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## weill (Aug 9, 2005)

My city doesnt have smog, but it has a low air quality.

It is in a valley, and all the bad air gets trapped.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

I encountered a really bad dose of smog in Seoul :


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## FM 2258 (Jan 24, 2004)

I know I'm probably the minority of this opinion but I kinda think smog looks cool over a city. It especially makes for some beautiful sunsets.


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## SUNNI (Sep 20, 2002)

as HKS mentioned smog in Seoul can be bad, i mean really bad, but alot of the times its the dust storms which come from the west .


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## Imperfect Ending (Apr 7, 2003)

Whats a day without smog...


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

hkskyline said:


> I encountered a really bad dose of smog in Seoul :


It's not smog but annoying yellow sandstorm from china.


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## c0kelitr0 (Jul 6, 2005)

last Friday was one of the clearest days in Manila because of the long 4-day holiday...everyone went to the beach or somewhere else...one of those rare days...clear smogless day and trafficless roads...


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## Mosaic (Feb 18, 2005)

What a great impact it is!!! The storm can reach and cover part of Japan include Tokyo.


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## SUNNI (Sep 20, 2002)

coldstar said:


> It's not smog but annoying yellow sandstorm from china.


is japan also affected by the storm?


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

SUNNI said:


> is japan also affected by the storm?


yes, but a little
Tokyo's yellow sand from China









and Beijing in spring


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## Bobdreamz (Sep 12, 2002)

Miami doesn't have much of an air pollutuion problem since the city is flat & next to the ocean but we do get sandstorms occasionally all the way from Africa if you can believe that!


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## Mosaic (Feb 18, 2005)

coldstar said:


> yes, but a little
> Tokyo's yellow sand from China
> 
> 
> ...


Is it affect the air quality?? I mean, do they have to wear mask or something? :runaway:


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

yellow sandstorm in Jixi, China










Yellow Sand Alert in Seoul (April 8th, 2006)

















abstract from Japanese *The Yomiuri*(April 6th, 2006)

_*Yellow sand has wrought unexpected damage. In 2002, airline flights were disrupted due to poor visibility caused by sandstorms. The sand also infiltrated chip-making plants, ruining computer chips, which do not like dust. 

There are reports of deaths caused by lung problems brought on by yellow sand, and there are concerns about the long-term health hazard that minerals in the sand may present to the lungs. 

For this reason, schools in South Korea close when a high density of yellow sand in the air is expected.* _


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Beijing air quality reaches hazardous level five *

BEIJING, April 10, 2006 (AFP) - Air pollution in Beijing hit "hazardous" levels for the second day running Monday, amid warnings from the state meteorological bureau of sandstorms to engulf north China in the coming days. 

A haze of dust and smog hovered over Beijing for much of the weekend with the air pollution rated at the highest level of five on both Sunday and Monday, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said on its website. 

Level five is the highest on the bureau's classification system and means the air quality is "hazardous". 

When air quality hits level five, the city normally issues warnings to elderly people and children to stay indoors and avoid strenuous activities. 

The problem could worsen as a Siberian cold front was moving quickly into northern China's Inner Mongolia and Gansu province, generating serious dust storms that could reach the nation's capital, the bureau warned. 

However, conversely, there was also a slight chance the incoming storms could provide some relief if the cold front brings rain. 

During the past decade of China's economic boom, Chinese cities have ranked among the most polluted in the world, with Beijing's air quality consistently among the worst in the country. 

The poor air quality this week comes as London Mayor Ken Livingstone and members of his city's 2012 Olympic Games organizing committee met with the organizers of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. 

Also visiting the capital Monday was the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency Stephen Johnson. 

Beijing has vowed to clean up its air before the Games, but pollution has worsened in recent months with the increasing number of cars on the city's roads one of the main problems. 

The International Olympic Committee has identified the city's pollution woes as one of the few areas of concern for the Beijing Games, with most other preparations well on track. 

"There are environment problems. But our Chinese friends are doing everything to prevent that and to find solutions," IOC president Jacques Rogge said in Seoul last week.


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## loveTaiwan (Mar 19, 2006)

hkskyline said:


> I encountered a really bad dose of smog in Seoul :


wow,Seoul has so many commie blocks.


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## LoveYunnan (Apr 1, 2006)

*Lijiang,China has no smog at all*


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## partybits (Apr 29, 2005)

*Mexico City*

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...geid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1145225411353

Mexico City breathes fresher air
Mexico City's famously polluted atmosphere is improving — but only slightly. But compared to two decades ago, the results of a long, sustained effort seem like a minor miracle
Apr. 17, 2006. 05:10 AM
FEATUREWRITER


MEXICO CITY—On a clear day, you can see Iztaccíhuatl.

Which is not to say that you can pronounce it.

One of two massive, snow-glazed volcanoes that crown the high blue horizon a two-hour drive southeast of Mexico City, Iztaccíhuatl (pronounced Ees-ta-SEE-wah-tul) used to be perpetually invisible from the streets of this Latin megalopolis, its four connected peaks invariably obscured by the nearly permanent shroud of smog that once covered the Mexican capital, among the largest and most severely contaminated cities on the planet.

But that was then — circa 1985 — and this is now. These days, the ancient volcano can often be seen in all its glory, shimmering above the city against a Marian-blue sky, just as it has done for millennia.

How can this be?

Well, in Mexico, they've done the seemingly impossible. They've cleaned up this city's famously polluted air — to a point.

"It's still bad, but it's much better than it used to be," says Canadian Jean-François Prud'homme, a long-time Mexico City resident.

"It has been a long, sustained effort, but it has worked."

Twenty years ago, this overgrown conglomeration of concrete, humanity and smoke seemed bound for environmental and demographic disaster.

In those days, denizens of Mexico City — chilangos, as they are known — were reckoned to be ingesting the foulest air on Earth, most of them suffering from a hacking cacophony of respiratory complaints. 

Even so, their ranks just kept swelling.

According to the worst-case predictions, the population of the city's greater metropolitan area was poised to proliferate to about 36 million people by the year 2000, all of them competing for what little oxygen was likely to survive in the rank and toxic atmosphere.

Fortunately, it hasn't worked out that way. 

Mexico City in the year 2006 is huge, yes, and troubled, certainly — but it is not quite the gasping urban nightmare that some feared it would become. The population of the city's greater metropolitan area is now about 20 million.

Meanwhile, the city's air quality has done something almost no one would have predicted just two decades ago: improved.

"We are still among the 10 most-polluted cities in the world, but we are better than New Delhi or Bangkok," says Jorge Bustamante, who works with a non-governmental organization here that studies air pollution in big cities. "We used to be in first place."

Over the course of a single generation, and thanks in large part to a concerted campaign against the worst excesses of the internal-combustion engine, Mexico's capital has gone from being the dirtiest city in the world to what it is today — still an unpleasant place to draw breath but not as unpleasant as before.

In April 1992, for example, atmospheric monitoring stations scattered around the city recorded high or "bad" concentrations of pollutants on 11 occasions, including two instances when the air quality was "muy mala" — serious enough to aggravate existing respiratory ailments in some people.

Eleven years later, in April 2003, a "bad" reading — ozone in this case — was recorded on just one occasion.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`It's still bad, but it's much better than it used to be'

Jean-François Prud'homme, 

Mexico City resident

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"I first came here in '93," says a U.S. resident of the city, "and the air is much better now."

But not what anyone would call good. Polluted or "unsatisfactory" air remains an abiding feature of Mexico City life, causing sensitive people to suffer irritation to their eyes, noses and throats just about every single day.

By way of comparison, the air in downtown Toronto caused a similar degree of annoyance on a total of 67 days last year, or about 20 per cent of the time. The air over Nathan Phillips Square and environs was "poor" — roughly equivalent to "bad" in Mexico City — on seven additional days, almost all of them during the summer.

In the Mexican capital, smog is at its worst right now, during the wintry dry season, when there are few if any rains to cleanse the city's atmosphere and when thermal inversions — masses of cold air squatting above the high intermontane basin that surrounds the city, allowing pollutants no means of escape — are a frequent occurrence 

"During the rainy season, it's fine," says JoAnne Butler, head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City. "But these winter days can be difficult."

When the city's air quality index hits unacceptable levels, ozone is often the main culprit.

A major component of smog, ozone is generated at ground level when by-products of faulty combustion interact with ultraviolet light. It has proved to be a stubborn pollution problem here, exacerbated by the city's lofty perch at 2,240 metres above sea level.

Still, the terse travel advice once issued as a matter of course to prospective visitors to the Mexican capital, "don't breathe," no longer seems to have quite the urgency it once did.

In recent years, many harmful pollutants that once clogged the city's air — carbon monoxide and lead, in particular — have been hauled down to tolerable levels, but other contaminants persist. Ground-level ozone, for example, is still a problem about 80 per cent of the time, while "suspended particles" — minute specks of matter that can do serious injury to humans — are at unacceptable concentrations one day out of three.

"It's still a risk to raise children here in Mexico City," says Bustamante. "We still have a long way to go in nitrogen oxide, ozone and suspended particles."

Authorities here struck a major blow against pollution in 1991 when they shut down and dismantled the 18 de Marzo petroleum refinery, which had been operating within city limits. They also took aim at the capital's notoriously cranky and crepitating automobiles, gradually getting rid of older cars that used dirty leaded fuel, while limiting the number of vehicles that could operate in the city on any given day.

Nowadays, all cars and trucks here are legally required to be equipped with catalytic converters, devices that help engines burn fuel more efficiently. Since 1997, only unleaded fuel has been available at Mexico City gas pumps, and efforts continue to reduce the sulphur content of local gasoline.

Last year, in an effort to speed public transit and reduce dependence on private cars, the city launched the first route in a planned network of dedicated bus lanes running along major urban arteries, a project called Metro Bus.

The inaugural line runs straight through the city for nearly 20 kilometres, along Avenida Insurgentes, and it's a traveller's delight, especially given Mexico City's chronically congested streets. 

Brand-new articulated diesel buses shuttle swiftly along the open lanes, from Indios Verdes to San Angel, making stops at airy stations with raised platforms and cantilevered glass-and-steel roofs.

According to Bustamante, the city plans eventually to operate as many as 30 similar routes.

He credits the sheer din of public outrage for this and other advances against pollution.

"The interesting thing was the public alarm," he says. "It wasn't the scientists alone."

It has also helped, he says, that authoritarian Mexico has gradually been democratizing in recent years.

"If it hadn't been for democratization," Bustamante says, "we would be like Bangkok. We would be talking about people collapsing in the streets because they couldn't breathe."

The air in Mexico City may still be far from good, but it is not quite as bad as that — and, on a clear day, you can even see Iztaccíhuatl.


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## steveowevo (Jan 27, 2006)

No smog here! :cheers:


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## Mosaic (Feb 18, 2005)

^^^Wow!!! really clear sky, where is it anyway?


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## Colonel (Feb 27, 2005)

Apr.17, Beijing >_<


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## SUNNI (Sep 20, 2002)

loveTaiwan said:


> wow,Seoul has so many commie blocks.


yes, and thats what made korea what it is today. 
i can assure you tho, inside, these are very good quality, and cost much more than you could imagine


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