Super smog shuts down northern city in China

HARBIN, China — Visibility shrank to less than half a football field and small-particle pollution soared to a record 40 times higher than an international safety standard in one northern Chinese city as the region entered its high-smog season.

Winter typically brings the worst air pollution to northern China because of a combination of weather conditions and an increase in the burning of coal for homes and municipal heating systems, which usually starts on a specific date. For the large northern city of Harbin, the city’s heating systems kicked in Sunday, and visibility in the city Monday was less than 50 yards, according to state media.

“I couldn’t see anything outside the window of my apartment, and I thought it was snowing,” Wu Kai, 33, said in a telephone interview from Harbin. “Then I realized it wasn’t snow. I have not seen the sun for a long time.”

She said her husband went to work in a mask, that he could barely see a few yards ahead of him and that his usual bus had stopped running.

“It’s scary, too dangerous. How could people drive or walk on such a day?”

The density of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, used as an indicator of air quality was well above 600 micrograms per cubic meter for several monitoring stations in Harbin, according to figures posted on the website of China’s environmental protection agency.

That included several readings of exactly 1,000, the first known readings of 1,000 since China began releasing figures on PM2.5 in January 2012. A safe level under World Health Organization guidelines is 25 micrograms per cubic meter.