Smog refugees flee Chinese cities as 'airpocalypse' blights half a billion

Many are reportedly fleeing China's
pollution-stricken north.

Tens of thousands of “smog refugees” have reportedly fled China’s pollution-stricken north after the country was hit by its latest “airpocalyse” forcing almost half a billion people to live under a blanket of toxic fumes.

Huge swaths of north and central China have been living under a pollution “red alert” since last Friday when a dangerous cocktail of pollutants transformed the skies into a yellow and charcoal-tinted haze.

Greenpeace claimed the calamity had affected a population equivalent to those of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined with some 460m people having to breathe either hazardous pollution or heavy levels of smog in recent days.

Read the story by Tom Phillips in Beijing written for The Guardian - “Smog refugees flee Chinese cities as 'airpocalypse' blights half a billion.”

(Smog and climate change have, in reality, the same origins for both are the product of a society that finds its sustenance through the burning of fossil fuels. Smog is little more than palpable evidence of a damaged atmosphere – Robert McLean)