Beijing issues rare air pollution alert

BEIJIN ( AP) — When the air gets really bad, Beijing says it has an emergency plan to yank half the city’s cars off the road. The only problem is it may be difficult to ever set that plan in motion.

It wasn’t triggered in January, when the city recorded extremely poisonous air pollution. And not this week, when pollution was expected to continue for several days at hazardous levels. A rare alert issued yesterday was an “orange” one — the second-highest in the four levels of urgency — prompting health advisories, bans on barbeques, fireworks and demolition work, but no order to pull cars from the streets.

“Yesterday, I thought it was bad enough when I went out to eat. But this morning I was hacking,” a Beijing pedestrian who gave her name as Li said as a thick haze shrouded the city.

Still, the government did not issue the red alert. Beijing’s alert system requires a forecast of three days in a row of severe pollution for the highest level. Days of extreme pollution or polluted skies that are expected to clear in less than three days do not trigger the most stringent measures.

A period of pollution in January that saw density readings exceeding 500 micrograms per cubic meter prompted only the mildest, blue-level alert. That density is about 20 times as high as the 25 micrograms considered safe by the World Health Organization.

The measures that went into effect yesterday also ask members of the public to use public transportation and to turn off their cars rather than let them run idle, as well as call for water sprinkling on the street and dust-control measures at building sites.

The most stringent level, red, would order half of Beijing’s five million cars off the road — based on the last digit of their license plate.