</s>BEIJING – Engulfed in choking smog, some northern Chinese cities limited the number of cars on roads and temporarily shut down factories Monday to reduce air pollution during a national “red alert.”

More than 700 companies stopped production in Beijing and traffic police were restricting drivers by monitoring their license plate numbers, stat media reported. Dozens of cities closed schools and took other emergency measures after a “red alert” was issued from Friday night to Wednesday for much of northern China.

“The smog has serious repercussions on the lungs and the respiratory system, and it also influences the health of future generations, so under a red alert, it is safer to stay at home rather than go to school,” said Li Jingren, a 15-year-old high school student in Beijing.

Authorities in the northern province of Hebei ordered coal and cement plants to temporarily shut down or reduce production. Elsewhere, hospitals prepared teams of doctors to handle an expected surge in cases of pollution-related illnesses.

China’s air pollution is blamed on its reliance on coal and emissions from older cars.

“If you are tracking back to the first day of this episode, you can see that the layer of the smog (in Beijing) is moving slowly from the south to the urban area in Beijing and then to the north,” said Dong Liansai, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace in Beijing. “You can easily find the large deployment (of smog) in the regions south of Beijing.”

Dong said emissions from factories in nearby provinces were the main cause of the smog choking the capital.

The smog had earlier grounded flights in some cities and closed highways due to low visibility.

On Sunday, news websites said the number of children being taken to Beijing hospitals with breathing trouble soared. Photos showed waiting rooms crowded with parents carrying children who wore face masks.

Members of the public closely watch levels of PM2.5, particles measuring 2.5 microns across that are easily inhaled and damage lung tissue.

The alert, this winter’s first, lasts through Wednesday. Red is the highest level on the four-tier system prescribing actions taken to reduce the smog.

Authorities in Jinan, south of Tianjin, raised that city’s alert to the second-highest level Sunday after the city “basically disappeared” in the haze, the newspaper Jilu Evening News reported. Photos on its website showed downtown office towers as ghostly silhouettes at midday.

Beijing and other cities have tried to improve air quality by switching power plants from coal to natural gas and rolling out fleets of electric buses and taxis.</s>BEIJING (AP) — Engulfed in choking smog, some northern Chinese cities limited the number of cars on roads and temporarily shut down factories Monday to reduce air pollution during a national “red alert.”

More than 700 companies stopped production in Beijing and traffic police were restricting drivers by monitoring their license plate numbers, state media reported. Dozens of cities closed schools and took other emergency measures after a “red alert” was issued from Friday night to Wednesday for much of northern China.

“The smog has serious repercussions on the lungs and the respiratory system, and it also influences the health of future generations, so under a red alert, it is safer to stay at home rather than go to school,” said Li Jingren, a 15-year-old high school student in Beijing.

Authorities in the northern province of Hebei ordered coal and cement plants to temporarily shut down or reduce production. Elsewhere, hospitals prepared teams of doctors to handle an expected surge in cases of pollution-related illnesses.

China’s air pollution is blamed on its reliance on coal and emissions from older cars.

“If you are tracking back to the first day of this episode, you can see that the layer of the smog (in Beijing) is moving slowly from the south to the urban area in Beijing and then to the north,” said Dong Liansai, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace in Beijing. “You can easily find the large deployment (of smog) in the regions south of Beijing.”

Dong said emissions from factories in nearby provinces were the main cause of the smog choking the capital.</s>The number of cars on roads was limited and factories were temporarily shut in some northern Chinese cities on Monday to reduce pollution during a national smog red alert.

More than 700 companies stopped production in Beijing and traffic police were restricting drivers by monitoring numberplates, state media reported. In choking conditions, dozens of cities closed schools and took other emergency measures after the alert was issued for much of northern China.

Authorities in Hebei province ordered coal and cement plants to shut down or cut output. Elsewhere, hospitals prepared teams of doctors to handle an expected surge in cases of pollution-related illnesses.

China’s long-standing air pollution is blamed on its reliance on coal and emissions from older cars.

“If you track back to the first day of this episode, you see that the smog [in Beijing] is moving slowly from the south to the urban area and then to the north,” said Dong Liansai, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace in Beijing. Dong said emissions from factories in nearby provinces were the main cause of the smog choking the capital.

The smog had earlier grounded flights in some cities and caused roads to be closed. On Sunday, news websites said the number of children being taken to Beijing hospitals with breathing trouble had soared.</s>A woman wearing a mask for protection against air pollution walks on a pedestrian overhead bridge in Beijing, China on Tuesday.

Thick, gray smog fell over Beijing on Tuesday, choking China’s capital in a haze that spurred authorities to cancel flights and close some highways in emergency measures to cut down on air pollution.

Beijing and much of industrial northern China are in the midst of a “red alert,” the highest level in China’s four-tiered pollution warning system. The alert has affected 460 million people, according to Greenpeace East Asia, which calculated that about 200 million people were living in areas that had experienced levels of air pollution more than 10 times above the guideline set by the World Health Organization(WHO).

Members of the public closely watch levels of PM 2.5, particles measuring 2.5 microns across that are easily inhaled and damage lung tissue. The WHO designates the safe level for the tiny, poisonous particles at 25 micrograms per cubic meter. On Tuesday morning, the PM 2.5 reading in Beijing climbed above 300. In many northern Chinese cities, the reading has exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic meter.

State media reported that 169 flights have been canceled at Beijing Capital International Airport, where visibility fell at one point to 300 meters. Sections of Beijing’s sixth ring road, the outermost highway encircling the city of more than 20 million people, were shut down in a bid to keep cars off the roads.

Authorities have even removed charcoal grills from restaurants and banned spray painting in parts of the city, state media reported.

People take videos of a flag-raising ceremony during smog at Tiananmen Square after a red alert was issued for heavy air pollution in Beijing on Tuesday.

Adding to a sense of crisis, local news in recent days reported that hospitals were encountering a boom in cases of children with respiratory problems and preparing teams of doctors to handle the surge of pollution-related cases. Photos showed waiting rooms crowded with parents carrying youngsters wearing face masks.

Outside the Capital Pediatrics Institute on Tuesday, parents voiced frustration about the toxic air for throat infections and the flu.

“He is coughing and breathing short, and always feeling sputum in his throat,” said Du Renxin, an IT worker, who was with his 2-year-old, who has had to make monthly visits to the doctor.

A man smokes as he rides in smog during polluted day in Beijing on Tuesday.

China has long faced some of the worst air pollution in the world, blamed on its reliance of coal for energy and factory production, as well as a surplus of older, less efficient cars on its roads. Beijing and other cities have tried to improve air quality by switching power plants from coal to natural gas and rolling out fleets of electric buses and taxis.

But despite its public commitment to reduce carbon emissions, China remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, with plans to build new factories and increase production. Government officials, facing rising energy prices earlier this year, lifted caps on production days for many mines.

Since the red alert went into effect, more than 700 companies stopped production in Beijing and traffic police were restricting drivers by monitoring their license plate numbers. Dozens of cities closed schools and took other emergency measures.

“The smog has serious repercussions on the lungs and the respiratory system, and it also influences the health of future generations, so under a red alert, it is safer to stay at home rather than go to school,” Li Jingren, a 15-year-old high school student in Beijing, said Monday.

In nearby Tianjin, authorities canceled 350 flights and closed all highways in the municipality. Public transportation services were increased as restrictions on cars were imposed.

Authorities in the northern province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, ordered coal and cement plants to temporarily shut down or reduce production.

The alert is expected to end Wednesday.</s>BEIJING (AP) — Thick, gray smog fell over Beijing on Tuesday, choking China’s capital in a haze that spurred authorities to cancel flights and close some highways in emergency measures to cut down on air pollution.

Beijing and much of industrial northern China are in the midst of a “red alert,” the highest level in China’s four-tiered pollution warning system. The red alert affected 460 million people, according to Greenpeace East Asia, which calculated that about 200 million people were living in areas that had experienced levels of air pollution more than 10 times above the guideline set by the World Health Organization.

Members of the public closely watch levels of PM2.5, particles measuring 2.5 microns across that are easily inhaled and damage lung tissue. The World Health Organization designates the safe level for the tiny, poisonous particles at 25 micrograms per cubic meter. On Tuesday morning, the PM2.5 reading in Beijing climbed above 300. In many northern Chinese cities, the reading has exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic meter.

State media reported that 169 flights have been canceled at Beijing Capital International Airport, where visibility fell at one point to 300 meters (984 feet). Sections of Beijing’s sixth ring road, the outermost highway encircling the city of more than 20 million people, were shut down in a bid to keep cars off the roads.

Authorities have even removed charcoal grills from restaurants and banned spray painting in parts of the city, state media reported.

China has long faced some of the worst air pollution in the world, blamed on its reliance of coal for energy and factory production, as well as a surplus of older, less efficient cars on its roads. Beijing and other cities have tried to improve air quality by switching power plants from coal to natural gas and rolling out fleets of electric buses and taxis.

But despite its public commitment to reduce carbon emissions, China remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, with plans to build new factories and increase production. Government officials, facing rising energy prices earlier this year, lifted caps on production days for many mines.

Since the red alert went into effect, more than 700 companies stopped production in Beijing and traffic police were restricting drivers by monitoring their license plate numbers. Dozens of cities closed schools and took other emergency measures.

“The smog has serious repercussions on the lungs and the respiratory system, and it also influences the health of future generations, so under a red alert, it is safer to stay at home rather than go to school,” said Li Jingren, a 15-year-old high school student in Beijing, on Monday.

In nearby Tianjin, authorities canceled 350 flights and closed all highways in the municipality. Public transportation services were increased as restrictions on cars were imposed.

Authorities in the northern province of Hebei ordered coal and cement plants to temporarily shut down or reduce production. Elsewhere, hospitals prepared teams of doctors to handle an expected surge in cases of pollution-related illnesses.

“If you are tracking back to the first day of this episode, you can see that the layer of the smog (in Beijing) is moving slowly from the south to the urban area in Beijing and then to the north,” said Dong Liansai, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace in Beijing. “You can easily find the large deployment (of smog) in the regions south of Beijing.”

On Sunday, news websites said the number of children being taken to Beijing hospitals with breathing trouble soared. Photos showed waiting rooms crowded with parents carrying children who wore face masks.

The alert is expected to end Wednesday.

Associated Press researcher Liu Zheng contributed to this report.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>BEIJING: Hospital visits spiked, roads were closed and flights cancelled Monday as China choked under a vast cloud of toxic smog, with forecasters warning the worse was yet to come.

At least 23 cities in the world’s most populous country have issued red alerts for air pollution since Friday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

A host of emergency measures have been implemented to protect the public’s health from the smog, which is smothering almost a ninth of the entire country.

On Monday morning—the fourth day of the alert which is scheduled to end on Wednesday—Beijing’s air quality was better than feared, with PM 2.5 levels hovering around 200, according to data maintained by the US Embassy.

However, the figure remained eight times the World Health Organization’s daily recommended maximum exposure level to the microscopic particles that carry major health risks.

And the relatively low number was just a temporary reprieve, Beijing’s meteorological authority told Agence France-Presse, adding that the worst haze would hit the city Monday night and linger until Tuesday.

In neighboring Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, PM 2.5 levels stood as high as 701 at noon, with levels of larger PM 10 particles even higher.

In the port city of Tianjin, where readings for PM 2.5 climbed over 400 early in the morning, more than 180 flights had been cancelled and around 60 delayed since the alert began, according to national broadcaster CCTV.

Highways in the city were also closed, it said.

Several large hospitals in Tianjin saw a surge in the number of patients with respiratory diseases like asthma, according to the People’s Daily.

A red alert, issued when severe smog is expected to last more than 72 hours, is the highest of Beijing’s four-tiered, color-coded warning system.

The capital issued its first ever-red alert last year in December since the adoption of an emergency response program for air pollution in 2013, despite frequent bouts of serious smog.

Most of China’s smog is blamed on the burning of coal for electricity and heating, which spikes when demand peaks in winter.

The issue is a source of enduring public anger in China, where fast economic growth in recent decades has come at the cost of widespread environmental degradation. AFP</s>More Chinese cities are issuing their first red alerts for pollution in response to forecasts of heavy smog, after the capital, Beijing, issued two this month following criticism for not releasing them earlier.

Shandong province in eastern China issued alerts in four cities after warning that the density of particulate matter in the air would exceed high levels for more than 24 hours. The Shandong environmental protection bureau said the alerts started Thursday morning and that kindergarten, primary and middle schools should close and construction of buildings and roads, and demolition work, should stop.

China’s air pollution is notorious after three decades of breakneck economic growth. In recent years, the government has said it is trying to address the problem as citizens have become increasingly aware of the dangers.

Meteorological authorities in Hebei, a province which neighbours Beijing and is regarded as China’s most polluted, issued its first red alert for smog on Tuesday.

Cities in Hebei took response measures. Xingtai and Handan instigated traffic control measures to take half the vehicles off the road on a given day, according to Hebei’s environmental protection bureau.



The first red alert in the port city of Tianjin, which is also close to Beijing, ended Thursday morning after three days.



Beijing issued its first two red alerts in December under a four-tier warning system that has been in place for two years. It had earlier experienced more hazardous levels of pollution, but environmental authorities said that their forecasting model must predict three or more days of smog at particular levels on the city’s air quality index.</s>Tens of thousands of “smog refugees” have reportedly fled China’s pollution-stricken north after the country was hit by its latest “airpocalyse” forcing almost half a billion people to live under a blanket of toxic fumes. 



Huge swaths of north and central China have been living under a pollution “red alert” since last Friday when a dangerous cocktail of pollutants transformed the skies into a yellow and charcoal-tinted haze.

Greenpeace claimed the calamity had affected a population equivalent to those of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined with some 460m people having to breathe either hazardous pollution or heavy levels of smog in recent days.

Lauri Myllyvirta, a Beijing-based Greenpeace activist who has been chronicling the red alert on Twitter, said that in an attempt to shield his lungs he was avoiding going outside and using two air purifiers and an industrial grade dust mask “that makes me look like Darth Vader”. 



“You just try to insulate yourself from the air as much as possible,” said Myllyvirta, a coal and air pollution expert.



Others have simply opted to flee. 



According to reports in the Chinese media, flights to some pollution-free regions have been packed as a result of the smog. 



Ctrip, China’s leading online travel agent, said it expected 150,000 travellers to head abroad this month in a bid to outrun the smog. Top destinations include Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the Maldives. 



Jiang Aoshuang, one of Beijing’s “smog refugees”, told the state-run Global Times she had skipped town with her husband and 10-year-old son in order to spare their lungs.

Jiang’s family made for Chongli, a smog-free ski resort about three hours north-west of the capital, only to find it packed with other fugitives seeking sanctuary from the pollution.

“It really felt like a refugee camp,” she was quoted as saying. 



Yang Xinglin, who also fled to Chongli, said she had requested time off from her job at a state-owned real estate firm so she did not have to inhale the smog. 



“You ask me why I left Beijing? It’s because I want to live,” Yang, 27, told the Guardian. 



Emma Zhang, a third “smog refugee”, told the South China Morning Post she and her young son had swapped their home in the western city of Chengdu, which has also been blighted by severe pollution, for a hotel in the temperate south-western province of Yunnan.

“I finally saw the blue sky. It was wonderful!” she said.

Li Dongke, a 27-year-old Beijinger, said her entire family had decamped to Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, or the tropical island of Hainan in the South China Sea. “It’s terrible,” she complained of the current pollution crisis.

Fleeing the danger zone has not been completely straightforward for China’s environmental exiles.

The China Daily reported that smog had paralysed airports in Beijing and across the country’s northern industrial heartland in cities such as Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, making escape impossible.

Beijing’s domestic Nanyuan airport cancelled all flights on Tuesday while the Beijing Capital international airport cancelled at least 273 flights.

Myllyvirta, the Greenpeace activist, said his group had been warning of a winter smog crisis since July when it began noticing the government was pumping economic stimulus into heavily-polluting industries such as cement and steel.

“A big part of what happened is that the steel price went up when the government started a huge wave of construction projects to stimulate the economy,” he said.

One consequence was that a large number of smaller, poorly-regulated steel producers had “gone on a tear” leading to increased emissions that were now blackening the skies over northern China.

Myllyvirta said he was convinced the future looked brighter for China’s environment, despite its latest airpocalypse.

A fall in the use of coal and air pollution were likely over the next three to five years as more urgent steps were taken to restructure the economy and preserve the environment.

For now, however, some locals saw temporary or permanent exile as their only option while many outsiders refused to come at all.

“People are definitely thinking about how to get out and … companies are complaining that it is hard to recruit talent [to come to China],” Myllyvirta said. 



“People don’t want to live in places with terribly polluted air.”</s>(CNN) A dangerous gray haze descended on Northeast China over the weekend, choking off schools, flights and industry and endangering citizens simply trying to breathe, according to local reports.

China saw the smog coming and last week issued its first red alert of the year for 23 cities.

As of Saturday, the smog covered 10.1 million square kilometers (3.9 million square miles), according to the country's Ministry of Environmental Protection.

That's roughly the area of the United States.

Tianjin Binhai International Airport, a major air cargo center, suspended service from Sunday evening to mid-morning Monday, resulting in the cancellation of 131 flights and 75 delays, Xinhua said.

Beijing, the capital, also restricted automobile traffic, while in Shandong Province, down the coast from Tianjin, officials closed toll gates on four expressways. Flights were also delayed in Shandong.

Other measures undertaken by affected cities include suspending construction projects, canceling classes for kindergartens and primary schools and closing or reducing production at some factories. The measure affected 1,200 factories in the capital alone, the Ministry of Environmental Protection reported, citing the China Securities Journal.

The situation is so dire that it's created a spate of "smog refugees" who are fleeing Beijing for cleaner air to the south, according to the South China Morning Post . With the exception of first-class seats, tickets to resort areas in Yunnan and Fujian provinces are almost sold out, the paper reported.

Cities along the Yellow Sea coast -- including Beijing and Tianjin, along with the provinces of Shandong, Hebei, and, further inland, Shanxi and Henan -- were among the hardest-hit locales . But unhealthy smog levels -- specifically, air quality index values higher than 350 -- were detected as far southwest as Chengdu and as far northeast as Jixi.

Beijing issues red alerts when pollutants are forecast to push the air-quality index higher than 200 for at least four days, above 300 for two or more days or higher than 500 for 24 hours.

Some cities had pockets where air pollution was off the charts. Literally.

While the air-quality index used by the US Environmental Protection Agency stops at 500, several Chinese cities had readings that far surpassed that number as of early Tuesday.

Not over yet

To put those numbers in perspective, India, Kosovo and Macedonia had areas where pollution levels topped 300 late Monday (and Sanliurfa, Turkey, and three cities in Mexico had scores higher than 860), but nowhere monitored by the World Air Quality Index Project had numbers anywhere near China's.

The highest UK score Monday was a 142 in Stanford-le-Hope, east of London, and the highest U.S. score was a 168 in Seeley, Montana, according to the project map, which focuses more heavily on North America, Europe and Asia than it does other continents.

While China's Ministry of Environmental Protection reported improvements in air quality in some cities, the red alerts are expected to stay in effect until Wednesday because of weather conditions that are preventing the pollution from dissipating.
Companies shut down production in Beijing and cars are taken off the road after a red alert for smog is issued in northern China. Dozens of cities have closed schools due to the smog.