Despite dense smog in Beijing, marathon participants ran without masks on Sunday.
In short:
- 30,000 runners participated in the Beijing Marathon amid heavy smog, with the city ranking as the second most-polluted major city globally that day.
- Despite health warnings, many marathoners went maskless amid unseasonably warm temperatures.
- Smog is forecasted to persist in parts of China for several days.
- Emergency responses were initiated in steel production hubs due to severe air pollution forecasts; no end date for these controls was provided.
Key quote:
"At present, a total of 237 national meteorological stations have broken historically highest temperatures in late October, which is still a relatively rare situation."
– Chief forecaster Fang Chong
The big picture:
Prolonged exposure to smog, a cocktail of pollutants, has been linked to a range of health issues, from respiratory problems to cardiovascular diseases. People in China have the highest particle pollution exposures in the world, wrote EHN's Brian Bienkowski.
Read the Reuters story here.
