Air pollution in Tokyo and Beijing
If you live in a city like Beijing which is notorious for its air pollution...
You would 1) check the sky and 2) look up the Air Quality Index (AQI=the higher AQI is, the more polluted air is) every day before going out. And if the air quality is bad, you would think “Oh I don’t wanna go outside today” or “Well, I have to wear a serious mask.” This is so annoying.
In Japan, it’s often said, “air quality in Tokyo is bad.” But Japanese people never check the air quality in Tokyo or Japan because we don’t expect that is that bad actually.
But today (August 3, 2018) I heard the warning from a city hall that “photochemical smog is covering some parts of Greater Tokyo area so that you should refrain from doing an activity outside.” That’s why I just checked the air quality and pollution in Tokyo (Photo on the top).
And I found out that even though that’s not too bad, air quality in Tokyo and surrounding areas is not that good... If the Air Quality Index is higher than 100, that’s supposed to be “unhealthy for sensitive groups”. In the map, obviously there are relatively many cities whose AQI is higher than 100. AQI of some places even exceeded 150, which is “unhealthy(for everyone).”
When I was in Beijing, there were some foreigners who saw AQI over 100 as a proof of air pollution and wore that kind of “serious masks.” But you can never find that kind of people in Tokyo and even if there are some, people would be just surprised to see them.haha
I wrote a brief article on this topic because I thought it’s interesting to know air quality in Japan is also bad sometime (especially around Tokyo and other big cities) even though Japanese people tend to only look at other countries’ air pollution, like the one in China. But it's also true that air quality in smaller cities in Japan is usually clean.
Environment is so important!
When I was in Beijing in 2016, the level of PM2.5 (air pollution) hit the highest of around 450... This is so bad (defined as “hazardous”) and your health may be affected by this too. For my case, I had high fever and felt so sore/numb all over my body that I couldn’t move and just slept entire day.
Also, AQI in Beijing seems just a bit worse than Tokyo if I only compare their today’s index. Air quality in Beijing improved since the world media put light on the severe air pollution in Beijing some years ago. But Beijing has to work more to purify its air. It’s also true that air quality in Beijing tends to worsen especially in winter time due to more emission by heaters and air pollution in other smaller cities stays severe.
Situation of each city’s air pollution seems different depending on what website you use to check. All the data I cited in this article is from The World Air Quality Index project.
http://aqicn.org/map/japan/jp/
#Tokyo #Beijing #Air-pollution #Air-Quality-Index #Environment
