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My History with a Jawbone UP
- Note: this is not a review of my UP by Jawbone, but simply a (long winded) summary of my history with it them....
Beijing Air: an Hourly Pollution Reading on Twitter
14 December 2009, 5:08am
While reading an article in The New Yorker titled "Beijing's Crash Program for Clean Energy", I saw a brief mention about how the US embassy in Beijing monitors air quality and posts it to Twitter every hour. I'm in China now, so doing much research on Twitter is time consuming (the Great Firewall has blocked the site for some time now). However, I was able to find the feed, and see that every hour for the last few days has read "unhealthy", with the best reading I found being "unhealthy for sensitive groups".
The feed posts a number between 0 and 500, measuring how unhealthy the air is. From airnow.gov:
EPA calculates the AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, particle pollution (also known as particulate matter), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
So, a reading of 50 means not bad. The US generally recognizes 100 or higher to be harmful. For the last several readings in Beijing, they've been around 170, the highest today reaching 184.
Well, government guys. All that work you did for the olympics really stuck around, huh?
update
[14 December 2009, 5:22am]
I just tried to do some more research on Chinese air particulates. I've found several links where the Chinese government allegedly posts the AQI of various Chinese cities. I say "allegedly", however, because all of them are down (except, of course, for Hong Kong's, which is both healthy and out of mainland China's jurisdiction).
I found one site that is maintained by the Chinese govt. Probably fake. But it put Hangzhou at 67.
comments
Will
[14 December 2009]That can't be good for you health.
THE Lowly Peon
[14 December 2009]WJerome: actually, i'm quite pleased. wilmette is something like 27, but chicago is up around 60 or 70, depending on the time of year. which puts it almost right at hangzhou.
but the thing to remember is that this scale measures the bad stuff... china has tons of dust and coal soot. so even if it's not going to kill me, it still doesn't mean it's fun.