Yesterday Chinese officials announced emergency contingency plans to improve air quality. Too little, too late.The Olympics kick off in eight days in Beijing. Endurance athletes are expected to be hardest hit by the air pollution so prevalent in the world's most populous nation. In recent days, the Chinese capital has been blanketed in a haze, and vehicle emissions have been higher than those expected by experts. Olympic organizers fear the pollution could not only prove a nuisance to spectators but also hinder the performance of athletes if they inhale the pollutants deep into the lungs.
Up to this point, Chinese authorities have ordered many gunk-spewing factories to move out of town or shut down. On Thursday, the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that officials would close 220 more factories, coal-fired power plants and steel plants in Beijing, as well as in nearby Tianjin city and surrounding Hebei province if air quality is forecast to be poor for any 48-hour period.
I've been to Beijing and other cities in China many times. I've run there. It sucks. After a run of even a moderate distance of say five or six miles, my lungs and throat ached. It felt like I had been been sucking on a tailpipe. I wish the athletes all the luck in such trying conditions.
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