In a Rare Move, Beijing Issues Air Pollution Alert

March 11, 2014- When the air gets really bad, Beijing reportedly has an emergency plan to pull half the city's cars off the road. The only problem is: It could be difficult to ever set that plan in motion.

The plan wasn't triggered in January, when the city recorded extremely poisonous air pollution. And not in February, either, when pollution continued for several days at hazardous levels. A rare alert issued in February was an 'orange' one - the second-highest in the four levels of urgency - prompting health advisories and bans demolition work, but no order to pull cars off the roads.

Beijing's alert system requires a forecast of three days in a row of severe pollution for the highest level. But this can be hard to predict. Pollution in January that saw density readings of PM 2.5 particles exceeding 500 micrograms per cubic meter prompted only a mild, blue-level alert. That density is about 20 times as high as the 25 micrograms considered safe by the World Health Organization.

The most stringent level, red, would order half of Beijing 5 million cars off the road. But the government may be reluctant to adopt the most disruptive measures, because it would be difficult to notify all drivers and boost the capacity of public transportation to accommodate extra passengers.

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