Air quality in the capital has deteriorated because of the heavy fog. Experts are worried about the particulate matter in the air, which is in higher concentrations in North China because the heavy fog may lead to various diseases including lung infections and cancer. Even if China can manage to keep the country’s smoking rate flat, the lung cancer rate is expected to keep rising for 20 or 30 years and worsening air pollution could be the major culprit. Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that without intervention, PM2.5, a major cause of choking smog, would replace smoking tobacco as the top risk factor for lung cancer. The disastrous effects of smog are nothing new, for in the winter of 1952, dense smog in London caused mainly by heavy coal combustion killed about 12,000 people in the city. That incident prompted the British government to move to clean up the air, and the effort paid off, for today, PM10 concentrations read at the significantly lower level of around 30 micrograms per cubic meter in the city.
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