Choking smog has all but shut down one of north eastern China’s largest cities, forcing schools to suspended classes, snarling traffic and closing the airport, in the country’s first major air pollution crisis of the winter.
Newsagency reports say severe smog has enveloped the city of Harbin in north-eastern China, disrupting traffic and closing schools.
Visibility in the city, famed for its annual ice festival, fell to a few metres.
Footage shown on state television showed a screen full of charcoal-brown smog, with faint shapes and colours beneath hinting at roads, cars and traffic signals.
Flights were cancelled and some highways shut because of reduced visibility, and schools are also closed because of the extremely poor air quality.
Figures from monitoring stations in central Harbin showed concentrations of PM2.5, tiny airborne particles considered the most harmful to health, reached 1000 micrograms per cubic metre, 40 times the World Health Organisation’s recommended standard.
The smog began to fall in the early evening but the overall air quality index, a different measure, was still being given as 500, the maximum level on the Chinese scale, and described as “beyond index”.
The smog in Harbin, a city of about 11 million people in far north-eastern China, came as it activated its public heating system ahead of the frigid winter, the Beijing Times said.
A top-level red alert for “thick smog or fog” was also issued for the entire province of Heilongjiang, which has Harbin as its capital, along with nearby Jilin and Liaoning, the official newsagency Xinhua said.
It came days after the government in Beijing announced that it plans to reinstate an odd/even car ban for days when the city’s air pollution reaches red-alert levels.
Under the plan, which China’s capital city employed during the 2008 Olympics and again in 2011, cars will only be allowed to drive on alternating days when severe air pollution persists for three or more days.
Pollution from rapid development and heavy coal use plagues wide swathes of China, prompting public criticism and pledges from the country’s leadership to make improvements.
A thick smog that covered the capital Beijing earlier this year, with similar PM2.5 levels as Harbin, made global headlines.
Huge swathes of northern China have been blanketed by smog at various times this year.
The State Council, or cabinet, said in June that among other measures it would hold local officials accountable for improving air quality.
Air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths and 25 million healthy years of life lost in China in 2010, the US-based Health Effects Institute said in March.
