Beijing schools suspend outdoor activity on smog, Xinhua says

Elementary and middle schools in Beijing will suspend outdoor activities after China’s capital issued an orange alert for smog this week, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The suspension also covers kindergartens and extracurricular training schools and will remain in force during the alert from today to Wednesday, Xinhua reported, citing the city’s Commission of Education.
China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, plans to upgrade coal power plants in the next five years to crack down on the kinds of pollutants and heavy smog that blanketed northern parts of the country last week. Beijing on Nov. 29 raised its air-pollution alert for the first time in more than a year to orange, the second-highest level in a four-tier system.
Beijing’s skies have only just cleared after concentrations of PM2.5 – the pollutants that pose the greatest risk to human health – reached 666 micrograms per cubic meter on Dec. 1. The World Health Organization recommends average exposure over a 24-hour period of no higher than 25 micrograms per cubic meter.
With a lack of wind hampering the dispersion of pollutants, readings of PM2.5 near Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing rose again to 117 as of noon yesterday, the Beijing Municipal Monitoring Center said on its website. Bloomberg