Beijing air bad for athletes?
Overheard in a Sonoma County tasting room Sunday was an American couple who live with their children in Beijing explaining that the air pollution in Beijing is so bad (LA is Lake County by comparison) that the Olympic athletes already in the region are actually staying in Tokyo and flying over to Beijing when necessary. They say that young people are routinely urged to wear masks when they are outside but often refuse to do so and that they do not let their own children outside to play. (One wonders what income is worth that but anyway ...)
Today I read in the Washington Post that Beijing has begun a three-week air cleanup program that prohibits all public smoking in the city of 16 million, and that has shut down factories and limited residents' driving to certain days of the week.
Will it be enough to clean up the air by the time the torch is in place? I don't know but I can say that this is one summer Olympics I wont be wishing I could attend in person. And I suspect that a lot of Americans who go over there are going to be rudely awakened to the fact that they can't breathe. Can you clean up the air of a city of 16 million in three weeks?