Shanghai Scrap

Before I get to the meat of this post, let me state one thing clearly: I don’t relish the idea of an Olympics held in a Beijing choked by smog/fog. Like any other sports fan (and I’m a big one), I’d like to see the Olympics take place under skies so blue that the excess oxygen guarantees world records. That is to say, I may be covering these games, but I also intend to enjoy them (I have my own tickets), and thus I wish China nothing but success over the next month.

Now, back to business.

With all of the talk about Beijing’s air quality, I feel some obligation to point out that the success of the Olympic pollution abatement efforts will be measured outside of Beijing, too. And nowhere will those secondary efforts be more closely scrutinized than in Hong Kong, which is hosting the Olympic equestrian events (that I will be attending for a couple of days in mid-August). Thus, it is with some dismay that I report that yesteday, July 28, Hong Kong recorded its worst air quality – EVER (SCMP has a subscriber-only feature on this inauspicious mark)! For those who like their news unfiltered, the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department maintains an online, live, Air Pollution index that can be found here. Below, an image of the latest air pollution readings – for HK – on the site:

So far as I know, the Chinese government has not required the factories upwind from Hong Kong to shut down for the Games. And, I expect, they won’t: Guangdong’s manufacturing sector is too vast and important to be shuttered in favor of a glorified horse show. Beijing’s readings might get better (the government is promising that they will), but Hong Kong’s almost certainly won’t.

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A Chinese friend recently asked why I’m so interested in Olympic air quality. It’s a fair question, and my answer was two-fold. First, I’m going to attend the Games, and in attending them, I’m interested in seeing peak atheletic performance. However, so long as oxygen levels are impaired for Olympic athletes, I won’t. Second, I live in China, and so, from a purely selfish standpoint, I’m quite interested in seeing the air-quality issue highlighted, if only because it might force the government’s hand to do something about it after the Olympics. I don’t want to speak for my colleagues in journalism and blogging, but I suspect that many of them feel similarly.

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One final air-quality note. Yesterday, Du Shaozhong, the spokesman and vice director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, claimed that Beijing’s air won’t effect athletes during the Games. Du’s statement, and the Xinhua story reporting it, were carefully worded, but – to this blogger’s mind – they seemed to imply that the airquality would be less than perfect. Whatever the case, I’d like to refer my readers to a 2007 study which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine on the topic of diesel fumes and coronory attacks. Back in September, I blogged about the study, here.

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[Fair and Balanced Addendum: For the record, the southern two-thirds of Minnesota – my home state – is currently under an air-pollution health advisory through Saturday (the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s daily air quality stats can be found here). So, for the record, I wouldn’t want the Olympics held there, either. Fortunately, though, this week’s key series (and I ain’t kidding about this) between the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox will be held indoors, in the under-appreciated Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Go Twins.