Sandstorms whipped across a wide swath of China yesterday, forcing residents to don masks and scarves to protect themselves from the unhealthy grit.
It was the latest sign of the effects of desertification — overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought have expanded deserts in the country’s north and west. The shifting sands have gradually encroached onto populated areas and worsened the sand storms that strike cities, particularly in the spring.
Winds blowing from the northwest were sweeping sand from the Xinjiang and Ningxia regions, as well as Gansu and Inner Mongolia provinces across China’s arid north. The sand and dust were even carried to parts of southern China.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The noon newscast on state television showed Hangzhou on the eastern coast, where graceful bridges and waterside pagodas were hidden in a mix of sand and other pollution.
The Central Meteorological Station urged people to close doors and windows, and cover their faces with masks or scarves when going outside. Sensitive electronic and mechanical equipment should be sealed off, the station said in a warning posted yesterday on its Web site.
China Central Television told viewers to clean out their noses with salt water and remove grit from their ears with cotton swabs dipped in alcohol.
It was the second sandstorm to hit Beijing in three days and skyscrapers in the capital were shrouded in a grayish mix of sand, dust and pollution. Residents scurried along sidewalks trying to avoid breathing in the fine particles that can cause chest discomfort and respiratory problems even in healthy people.
The US embassy in Beijing warned that particulate matter in the air made conditions “hazardous,” though high winds dispersed some of the pollution and the air quality was later upgraded to “very unhealthy.”
Duan Li (段麗), a spokeswoman for the Beijing Meteorological Station, said conditions in the city seemed more severe because a sandstorm on Saturday deposited grit on rooftops, sidewalks and trees. The winds yesterday carried in even more sand and stirred up what was already there.
Conditions were expected to improve by last night, with winds blowing the sand toward the southeast.
The worst recent sandstorm to hit Beijing was in 2006, when about 300,000 tonnes of sand was dumped on the capital.
Hong Kong’s air pollution also soared to record levels yesterday, the territory’s Environmental Protection Department said, warning that a toxic stew enveloping the region was a danger to the public.
The government agency said it found Air Pollution Index (API) readings in several cases were more than double the level at which it advises the general public to stay indoors.
“Today’s API is at record high levels,” an agency spokeswoman said in an e-mail to reporters.
Hong Kong’s famed skyline and harbor are often shrouded in a blanket of haze, which has been criticized as a public health disaster and blamed for driving some expatriates away from the international financial hub.
The API is a ratio based on the concentration of pollutants in the air, including sulfur dioxide and lead, with a higher reading indicating an increased danger to the public.
In July 2008, the territory’s environmental agency recorded air pollution levels as high as 202, well below yesterday’s record numbers which at midday ranged from a low of 192 to a record 453 reading at one roadside station.
Five other stations had readings above 400 at midday, the agency said.
“As the sandstorm from northern China is moving southward with the northeast monsoon and is now affecting Hong Kong, the API is expected to reach the ‘very high’ or ‘severe’ level,” it said in a statement.
People with heart or respiratory problems are advised to stay indoors at an API reading of more than 100. The public is advised to stay indoors or avoid prolonged exposure to heavy traffic areas when the reading is more than 200.
“This is very scary, over 300 is very scary, very polluted,” Edwin Lau (劉祉鋒), director of Friends of the Earth Hong Kong, told reporters.
Lau said the territory’s pollution problem yesterday was exacerbated by an unusual combination of the sandstorms in China and strong southerly winds, which are blowing particulates into Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong’s air pollution is bad already, but this shows we’re not dealing very well with the most severe weather situations. It is a very big alarm,” he said.
Students at Hong Kong’s Bradbury School were kept indoors yesterday.
“We have stopped any outdoor physical activity or playing to safeguard the children,” John Ainsworth, a vice principal at the school, told reporters.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS