Chinese people battle against smog despite doubts

Even with dense smog covering the north China city of Shijiazhuang for 12 consecutive days, few people in the hazy city wear masks. For Liu Jia, 30, a white-collar worker in Beijing, it is impossible to live in the "poisonous" air without any protection. "Mask and air purifier are necessities for families with children and elderly people," said Liu, mother of a three-year-old boy. Air purifiers ranging from 3,000 yuan(490 U.S. dollars) to 4,000 yuan are the most popular. Some machines with multiple functions sold at a higher price of over 10,000 yuan are also hot items, according to a salesman at a Beijing outlet of Gome, an electronics retailer. Taobao.com, China's leading online shopping platform, estimated in a report on Dec. 12 that netizens will spend about 870 million yuan on anti-smog products in 2013. Smog gear is being bought by middle-class consumers from the developed megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. In less-developed cities, people are much more likely to turn a blind eye to the murk. Salesmen in a mall in Shijiazhuang complain that few people are interested in air purifiers even though the city has some of the worst pollution in the country, perhaps the world. "Consumption of smog goods to be over. People get used to the smog and life goes on. You do not think too much about the haze," Zhang Shuo, 29, a resident of Shijiazhuang who questioned the quality and utility of smog masks and air purifiers. Zhou Peng, 30, an accountant with a local commercial bank in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, rarely sees anyone wearing a mask even if masks given away by the bank for free. "I doubt if the air purifiers work. No one wants to spend money on the machine. It is ridiculous to try to fight against unpredictable weather," Zhou said. Most air purifiers made in China do not meet international standards, said Song Guangsheng, director of the China Indoor Environment Test Center. An International Agency for Research on Cancer report in conjunction with the World Health Organization calls outdoor air pollution a leading cause of cancer. It is the first time that a UN health monitor has made such a strong statement on the risk of cancer from outdoor air pollution. The State Council issued the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in September in an attempt to control PM2.5 (airborne particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns). The plan requires PM2.5 in populated regions and metropolises to be reduced significantly by 2017. Before the effect of the national plan and local smog measures are felt, sensitive people have started to buy insurance against smog. Wang Jing, an insurance seller in Shijiazhuang said the hazards of smog are a good way to promote her company's products, but for those already suffering from respiratory ailments, medical expenses can be a burden their families cannot bear. Chen Wanyou, a taxi driver in Shijiazhuang recently afflicted by tonsillitis, complains that it was unfair to have pay for a disease caused by the polluted air. The government should allocate some subsidies or smog facilities to people in hazy regions, said Lu Xiaodong, an economist at Sun Yat-Sen University. Outdoor workers and poor families should have priority for subsidies, Lu said.