Feed: CNN.com - WORLD
Posted on: Monday, December 05, 2011 5:20 PM
Author: CNN.com - WORLD
Subject: Authorities cancel flights as haze shrouds Beijing
Thick air shrouding Beijing forced authorities to cancel flights and close expressways, state media reported Monday. |
Authorities cancel flights as haze shrouds Beijing
- The state-run Xinhua news agency blames smog for travel delays
- A U.S. Embassy monitor says the air quality is "hazardous"
- State media reports warn of traffic gridlock, but do not mention health concerns
- The U.S. Embassy and Chinese officials use different systems to measure air pollution
Beijing (CNN) -- Thick air shrouding Beijing forced authorities to cancel flights and close expressways, state media reported Monday.
The Beijing Capital International Airport canceled 56 departing flights and delayed dozens of others Monday morning, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
State media offered conflicting descriptions of what caused the haze.
"Smog disrupts flights at Beijing airport," a headline from the Xinhua news agency said. The state-run China Daily newspaper, citing Beijing's weather officials, said melting snow made the air wet and caused heavy fog that "crippled traffic, delayed flights and created obstacles in the highways in many places of North China since Saturday."
Last month, when many official reports in Chinese state-run media referred to the air as being filled with "fog," the government acknowledged that the haze was due to smog.
While "fog alerts" are declared, "Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environment Affairs, said the hazes that have been smothering Beijing are really 'smog,'" the state-run China Daily reported in November.
Online monitoring from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing described the air quality as "hazardous" at numerous intervals throughout the day Sunday and Monday.
Chinese state media reports warned of traffic gridlock and poor visibility, but did not mention health concerns.
"The air quality in Beijing had worsened as a result of the fog on Sunday and recovered a little on Monday," Xinhua said Monday, noting that China's National Meteorological Center's alert for the region was at the lowest level in the country's fog alert system.
The U.S. Embassy and Chinese officials use different systems to measure air pollution. The U.S. Embassy's air quality monitor includes smaller particles that are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, explains that these smaller particles "are believed to pose the largest health risks" and "are small enough to get into the lungs and even the blood stream."
Chinese monitoring stations around Beijing track only larger, "coarse" particulates, between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter.
Forecasters predict winds from a cold front moving into central and east China Tuesday will "blow the fog away," China Daily reported Monday.
CNN's Josh Levs contributed to this report.
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