Beijing air quality -- concerns for athletes

I didn't read the articles you posted (don't have time now), but I think I read somewhere that Beijing's hosting of the Olympics was conditional, and that there were "clean ups" that had to be implemented by a certain date, etc. Not sure where I read it (that was a few years ago) and what those were. The IOC is prepared, I think, to move the Olympics to another location if need be (there was talk of moving the Athens games when it appeared the city wouldn't be ready in time). Unfortunately, I would imagine we're well past the point of no return, with the games only 20 weeks away; I would imagine any change of venue would have occurred at least a year or two out. But, I don't really know what I am talking about...

It's really a shame, though .

There have already been a few athletes that have either dropped from events or changed to shorter ones because of the air quality.  And there is now rumors of boycotts because of the situation in Tibet.

No surprise that in an impoverished communist country that there are all sorts of issues popping up after the fact ........

We were in Beijing two years ago and the air was aweful!  Not only could you see the smog, you could smell it.  I guess for a short time one is there for the Olympics it won't kill ya though.

The population of Beijing is about 17.5 million.

The population of Houston (one of our most poluted cities) is about 2 million.  NYC about 8 million.

This is a picture from our hotel:

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Here in Seoul, we get Beijing's 'air' all the time, especially this time of year when the Yellow Dust starts flying.  We have air quality alerts every day.  I've heard Beijing is much worse than Seoul, and that's hard to imagine!

As for the situation in Tibet, and etc.......I mean, the human rights, environmental, and animal abuses.......some of the stuff that goes on definitely turns my stomach (especially some of the ways in which they treat animals).  There's a reason why, in twelve years in Korea as an expat, we have traveled to almost every other country in Asia except China. 

Rant over.

Seeing your responses, I'm even more concerned.  I hadn't seen their air looking that bad -- and that's on a regular basis.  I didn't know that Korea also felt effects from China's bad air.  It's just very telling to me when athletes choose to not participate for health reasons as compared to political motives.  And yes, it does seem way too late to do anything more about it. 

Their only short-term solution that I've seen is to do cloud-seeding, which one wouldn't think is needed given the soots and PM2.5-PM10 already airborne, but at least that addition of "seed" molecules would bring rain to rain out much of the PM-matter.  And what do you get after rain?  Add heat and get really high humidity, another outdoor exerciser's issue. 

How did China get to be top-dog for this year's games??

Gah, how depressing...I thought there was more to it than that. 

Direct from the the IOC's Commission Evaluation of the five city finalists when choosing the host city for the 2008 Olympic Games:

If anyone is going to the Olympics (or not), you might find these interesting.

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Thanks for posting those pictures, they are cateful to meet.   Esp the in-floor urinal.  

That's no urinal man....that's the darn toilet in the woman's bathroom!  They had the same thing in the men's in addition to the unrinals.  You have to learn to stand and go. 
Oh, and see that little basket?  That's where one is supposed to put the used toilet paper.  Yes, the bathroom stunk!  This was the public bathroom at the Beijing zoo.

We never did figure out what that sign meant....obviously something was lost in translation.

~Mike