That's not even the point, not even who knew what, when & probably who - the comrades all looked the other way - and, like the other farmers, "they" won't dip into the same rice mills. It's shipped & sold elsewhere or at least consumed by others.

Now, government inspectors at least put on the official drama to cool people off - spin control for the media's show & tell.

Stock up on imported spring water, cup-a-noodles, energy bar & even MRE's - on recent CA flights, they were serving mostly ducks in J & F - no chicken or pork.

Ummm, ducks are also "poultry" (though I don't keep close enough tabs on this flu thing to know whether or not any cases have been transmitted to them).

cancel

Asian 'flu is the term usually reserved for the 1957 influenza A pandemic. The recent posts are about avian 'flu, and specifically H7N9, which infects birds primarily. There's not much evidence that it infects pigs. Although H7 influenza viruses can and have infected wild birds and domesticated and wild ducks, the current outbreak is mostly confined to poultry (hens).

tb

NY TIMES Article
 

Life in a toxic country
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ticleLarge.jpg

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/04...c-country.html

Yet another story ....and so true. I guess it will take ages to improve ......the air quality on 2013 so far is really horrendous.

My guess is not only 2013, just in years past there was less info (not that info now is so great). One city I do like in China was Xiamen, the times I have been there clean air and in general a cleaner city (by China standards). Seems all Taxi cars there use LPG/CNG, wonder if Beijing can do that?

Beijing already does that, and also most of the buses. Isn't helping since there are just too many other sources of pollution from within the city and (importantly) from the industrial belt east and southeast of BJ.

Xiamen is indeed nice, would be one of my picks for living/working (if there were any jobs available!), and has some of the better air amongst Chinese big cities but it has three advantages:
--less volume of automobiles
--not much heavy industry contribution from the city or nearby cities
--geographic location and sea breezes the blow the stuff away.

We'll be spending 5 days in Beijing followed by another 5 in Shanghai at the beginning of November.

Having just viewed the PM2.5 stats, I'm getting a bit worried. Should we be thinking of changing our Beijing plans and visit another city instead?

If not, what can we do in BJ that won't expose us unnecessarily to heavy levels of pollution?

Fall (before the weather gets cold and the coal burning starts) is usually one of the best times of the year to visit Beijing from an air pollution perspective. Furthermore, a few days of bad air isn't going to kill you.

This is the key point. Unless you have specific and serious respiratory problems, the pollution is not going to affect you in a serious way. If you are really that worried, I would avoid China altogether. SH and almost any other city may also have bad days.

tb

Well, at least you're not going to Harbin:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z4

This afternoon/evening were also pretty atrocious 1500 miles to south here in Nanning... perhaps the first noticeable air pollution I've seen here. With all of the construction going on, one would expect to see this more often, but I guess there's not much heavy industry (or coal use) in the region. My colleagues told me that an inversion was to blame, but that it would probably pass quickly. Fortunately, they were right (Beijing's spring inversions can last for days at a time).

Probabaly fugitive dust, from construction.

They can copy California "CEQA" and label it: China Environmental Quality Act.
Then claim they replaced diesel engines in construction machinery with
lithium batteries and electric motors.

I'd bring some masks (seriously).