BEIJING — Beijing and other parts of northern China were stung by hazardous air pollution levels Thursday as strong winds blew a sandstorm through the region.

Air in the capital turned a yellowish hue as sand from China's arid northwest blew in, turning the sky into a noxious soup of smog and dust.

---

At 6 a.m. local time, the U.S. Embassy's air quality index showed a reading of 516 for particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Known as PM2.5, such particles are considered particularly dangerous because they can lodge deeply in the lungs. On the American air pollution index, the air at that time and throughout much of the morning was classified as "beyond index."

 

The developers of the U.S Embassy's air monitoring station had planned for an index capped at 500. The World Health Organization suggests that 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 should be limited to levels of 25 on that scale.

Beijing's municipal government issued a yellow-haze warning late Wednesday while state media urged citizens to stay indoors or to take precautions such as donning face masks before venturing outside.

Across northern China in provinces including Hebei, Hubei, Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia, air monitoring stations recorded readings over 500, and visibility across the region was severely curtailed. In some places visibility was below 3,200 feet, leading to highway closures, suspension of high-speed train services and the cancellation of flights from Beijing International Airport.

By mid-afternoon, pollution levels had fallen and strong winds had pushed much of the remaining cloud cover from the capital.

Geographically close to the Gobi Desert, Beijing and other northern cities are particularly susceptible to sandstorms such as Thursday's. Sandstorms are prevalent in late winter and spring as melting frost frees sand and strong winds kick it up and push it eastward.

The start of 2013 has brought chronic bad air to much of China. In January, air pollution readings were so bad that they were compared to living in an airport smoking lounge. That comparison was underscored by record high levels of PM2.5 on Jan. 12, when readings topped out at 755 on the air quality index.

Frustration over China's continued pollution problems popped up across Chinese social media. But irritation over the long-brewing issue was perhaps best summed up by a viral photo originally posted on popular Web portal QQ.com of an unhappy looking Yao Ming, grimacing at the Beijing sky.

Yao, the former NBA All-Star and current member of a Communist Party advisory board known as the China People's Political Consultative Conference, is currently in Beijing in the lead-up to next month's National People's Congress.

The congress will mark the final step in China's once-in-a-decade leadership change as party heads Xi Jinping and Le Keqiang formally take over as China's president and prime minister, respectively.

Since taking over China's ruling Communist Party late last year, the new leaders have spoken repeatedly about improving the mainland's environment.

Many China watchers believe that China's environmental degradation -- underscored by severe air pollution, contaminated soil and dirty waterways -- will be a focal point during the congress.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:46 AM EST

Thick, off-the-scale smog shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting Beijing to temporarily shut factories and curtail fleets of government cars.

The capital was a colorless scene. Street lamps and the outlines of buildings receded into a white haze as pedestrians donned face masks to guard against the caustic air. The flight cancellations stranded passengers during the first week of the country's peak, six-week period for travel surrounding the Chinese New Year on Feb. 10.

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The U.S. Embassy reported an hourly peak level of PM2.5 — tiny particulate matter that can penetrate deep into the lungs — at 526 micrograms per cubic meter, or "beyond index," and more than 20 times higher than World Health Organization safety levels over a 24-hour period.

Liu Peng, an employee at a financial institution in Beijing, said he will keep his newborn baby indoors.

"It's really bad for your health, obviously," Liu said. "I bike to work every day and always wear a mask. The pollution in recent years is probably due to the increase in private cars and government cars."

Visibility was less than 100 yards in some areas of eastern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. More than 100 flights were canceled in the eastern city of Zhengzhou, 33 in Beijing, 20 in Qingdao and 13 in Jinan.

Every year, China's transport system bursts at the seams as tens of millions of people travel for the Lunar New Year holiday, in the world's largest seasonal migration of people.

Ren Haiqiang, a bank worker in his early 30s, said he had booked tickets to fly out of Beijing on Thursday to visit family in the coastal city of Dalian, but now worried about flight cancellations.

"Traveling over the holiday is already a huge hassle, along with all the gift-giving and family visits. We thought flying would be the best way to avoid the crush, but if the weather continues like this we'll be in real trouble," Ren said as he waited in line at a bakery in downtown Beijing.

Beijing's city government ordered 103 heavily polluting factories to suspend production and told government departments and state-owned enterprises to reduce their use of cars by a third, Xinhua said. The measures last until Thursday.

Beijing's official readings for PM2.5 were lower than the embassy's — 433 micrograms per cubic meter at one point in the afternoon— but even that level is considered "severe" and prompted the city government to advise residents to stay indoors as much as possible. The government said that because there was no wind, the smog probably would not dissipate quickly.

Patients seeking treatment for respiratory ailments rose by about 30 percent over the past month at the Jiangong Hospital in downtown Beijing, Emergency Department chief Cui Qifeng said.

"People tend to catch colds or suffer from lung infections during the days with heavily polluted air," he said.

Air pollution has long been a problem in Beijing, but the country has been more open about releasing statistics on PM2.5 — considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other pollutants — only since early last year. The city hit its highest readings on Jan. 12, when U.S. Embassy readings of PM2.5 reached as high as 886 micrograms per cubic meter.

Celebrity real estate developer Pan Shiyi, who has previously pushed for cities to publish more detailed air quality data and who is a delegate to Beijing's legislature, called Tuesday morning for a "Clean Air Act." By late afternoon, his online poll had received more than 29,000 votes, with 99 percent in favor.

On Monday, Wang Anshun was elected Beijing's mayor after telling lawmakers the municipal government should make more efforts to fight air pollution, according to Xinhua.

Last week, he announced plans to remove 180,000 older vehicles from the city's roads and promote government cars and heating systems that use clean energy.

BEIJING — Air quality in Beijing was the "worst on record" on Saturday and Sunday, according to environmentalists, with pollution 30-45 times above the recommended safety levels.

With a thick smog wrapping the Chinese capital since Friday, the city's pollution monitoring center warned the city's 20 million residents to stay indoors.

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Data posted on Sunday by the monitoring center showed particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) had reached more than 600 micrograms per square metre at some monitoring stations in Beijing, and was as high as 900 on Saturday evening.

The recommended daily level for PM2.5 is 20, according to the World Health Organisation. Such pollution has been identified as a major cause of asthma and respiratory diseases.

"This is really the worst on record not only from the official data but also from the monitoring data from the U.S. embassy — some areas in (neighboring) Hebei province are even worst than Beijing," said Zhou Rong, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said heavy pollution had been trapped by an area of low pressure, making it harder to disperse, and the conditions were likely to last another two days.

Related: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off life span

Pollution has been identified as one of the biggest challenges facing China's leaders, with outgoing president Hu Jintao saying during his address to the Communist Party Congress last November that the country needed to "reverse the trend of ecological deterioration and build a beautiful China."

China said at the end of last year that it would begin releasing hourly pollution data for its biggest cities.

Beijing has already committed to a timetable to improve air quality in the city, and has relocated most of its heavy industry, but surrounding regions have not made the same commitments, said Zhou.

"For Beijing, cleaning up will take a whole generation but other regions don't even have any targets to cut coal burning. I bet the pollution here is mainly from those surrounding regions." 

 

Tens of thousands of dead fish that washed up on Lake Erie beaches in Ontario, Canada -- and had locals wondering if something or someone had poisoned the water -- were likely killed by a lack of oxygen caused when lake sediment was stirred up, the province reported Friday.

Water samples "do not show evidence of a manure spill or anything unusual in terms of contaminants," Ministry of Environment spokeswoman Kate Jordan told NBC News.

Jordan said it wasn't known if the die-off was unprecedented, but that "it was a significant number -- tens of thousands."

---

The fish were found along 25 miles of beach, with locals first coming across them on Monday.

But three days earlier, residents had complained of a manure-like smell from the water, the Chatham Daily News reported.

"It was rank, so profoundly rank, that it was difficult to stay down there and the next morning we woke up to the smell," Neville Knowles said of his family's weekend trip to Rondeau Provincial Park.

Another park visitor, Frank van den Boorn, said he and his family were at the beach when he noticed the darkened water and smelled something wrong.

"I said to the kids 'We've got to get out of here, there is something wrong with the water'," Van den Boorn recalled. "I scooped up a handful of water and ... you could still smell the body stench on it."

"I just couldn't believe people were letting their kids swim in it," he added.

Jordan said the smell and darkened water were consistent with the natural phenomenon known as "lake inversion" -- where a change in wind can kick up waves that stir up sediment and reduce the oxygen levels for fish.

The wind did change directions last week, she noted, and a local water temperature gauge showed colder water, suggesting it had been churned up from the depths.

The province is also testing some of the dead fish and those results should provide conclusive evidence, Jordan said. The results should be ready next week.

The dead fish included catfish, carp and perch.

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ROME -- Up to 100 Sardinian coal miners who say they see a future in clean energy have armed themselves with hundreds of pounds of explosives and barricaded themselves nearly 438 yards underground to put pressure on the Italian government to protect the mine's survival.

The miners, from a 460-strong workforce, seized 772 pounds of company explosives and locked themselves inside the Carbosulcis mine -- the country's only coal mine -- west of Cagliari overnight on Monday, one of them said, ahead of a government meeting this week to discuss the pit's future.

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"We are worried that the mine may close. We are afraid for our jobs," Sandro Mereu, 54, a miner who has worked there for 28 years told Reuters.

"We are prepared to stay here until we hear a response from the government that secures the future of the mine. We will stay here indefinitely," Mereu told Reuters by telephone. 

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According to The Associated Press, miners at the mine told Sky TG24 TV that they wanted the government and Parliament to quickly approve funding for a project to capture and store underground carbon dioxide that otherwise would add to polluting greenhouse gases. 

The miners want the mine to be diversified into a combined mining and carbon capture site to protect its future. 

Carbosulcis was estimated to have 600 million metric tons of coal reserves in 2006 but has struggled to stay productive. It was previously occupied in 1984, 1993 and 1995, when protesting workers stayed in a tunnel for 100 days.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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QIDONG, China -- Angry demonstrators occupied a government office in eastern China on Saturday, destroying computers and overturning cars in a violent protest against an industrial waste pipeline they said would poison their coastal waters.

Hours later, the mayor of the city where the pipeline was to have originated said the project was being cancelled, Reuters reported.

The demonstration was the latest in a string of protests sparked by fears of environmental degradation and highlights the social tensions the government in Beijing faces as it approaches a leadership transition this year.

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Thousands of protesters marched through the coastal city of Qidong, roughly one hour north of Shanghai by car, shouting slogans against the planned pipeline that would empty waste from a paper factory in nearby Nantong into the sea.

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Demonstrators rejected the government's stand that waste from the factory would not pollute the coastal waters.

"The government says the waste will not pollute the sea, but if that's true, then why don't they dump it into Yangtze River?" said Lu Shuai, a 25-year-old protester who works in logistics.

"It is because if they dump it into the river, it will have an impact on people in Shanghai and people in Shanghai will oppose it."

The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted local residents who said the sewage discharge from the pipeline was expected to be as much as 150,000 tons per day, according to the AFP news agency.

Cars overturned, cops beaten
Several protesters entered the city government's main building and were seen smashing computers, overturning desks and throwing documents out the windows to loud cheers from the crowd.

China begins to admit 'fog' is really smog

An AFP photographer described the scene, saying demonstrators seized bottles of liquor and wine from the offices, along with cartons of cigarettes -- all of which Chinese officials frequently receive as bribes.

Reuters witnessed five cars and one minibus being overturned. Over 1,000 police -- some paramilitary -- guarded the city government office compound in lines.

At least two police officers were dragged into the crowd at the government office and punched and beaten enough to make them bleed.

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According to the AFP, searches including "Qidong" on China's popular microblogging site Sina Weibo were blocked Saturday. Sina Weibo has over 250 million subscribers.

Earlier posts on Weibo and on Twitter indicated that the protesters had stripped the clothes off the local party secretary, but these reports could not be immediately verified.

On Friday, in an effort to stave off the protest, the Qidong city government announced it would suspend the project for further research.

But many protesters said on Saturday that postponement was not enough.

"If the government really wanted to stop this project, they should have done it right from the beginning. At this point they are too late," said Xi Feng, a 17-year-old protester.

Local officials took steps to ward off the demonstration and residents received text messages and letters warning that any public demonstration would be illegal.

The reversal came Saturday afternoon, when Nantong Mayor Zhang Guohua announced in a statement that the city would terminate the project proposed by a Japanese-owned paper factory in its jurisdiction. 

Rising discontent
Environmental worries have stoked calls for expanded rights for citizens and greater consultation in the tightly controlled one-party state.

The outpouring of public anger is emblematic of the rising discontent facing Chinese leaders, who are obsessed with maintaining stability and struggling to balance growth with rising public anger over environmental threats.

The protest followed similar demonstrations against projects the Sichuan town of Shifang earlier this month and in the cities of Dalian in the northeast and Haimen in southern Guangdong province in the past year.

China tells US Embassy to stop reporting Beijing pollution

In Shifang, the government halted construction of a copper refinery following protests by residents that it would poison them. It also freed most of the people who were detained after a clash with police.

The leadership has vowed to clean up China's skies and waterways and increasingly tried to appear responsive to complaints about pollution. But environmental disputes pit citizens against local officials whose aim is to lure fresh investment and revenue into their areas.

Behind The Wall: Full NBC News coverage from China
Pictures from China on NBCNews.com's PhotoBlog

NBC News researcher Tianzhou Ye, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 10:52 a.m. ET: While Shifang city government officials have announced that construction on the refinery will be halted, some residents have continued to protest in the streets to demand the release of some protesters detained during the protests including an unknown number of college students from a nearby aviation academy.

BEIJING -- Construction of a copper factory in central China has been halted, an official said Tuesday, after days of angry protests over fears of pollution culminated in clashes that saw riot police fire stun grenades and tear gas to break up a crowd of thousands.

Residents of the town of Shifang, Sichuan province, have been slowly gathering around a local city government office since Saturday, the day after a foundation-laying ceremony put on by Sichuan Hongda – a conglomerate specializing in minerals, real estate and finance – to celebrate the first phase of construction on the $1.64 billion proposed molybdenum-copper alloy refinery nearby.

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When -- or now if -- completed, the refinery could generate an estimated $8 billion a year.

According to local Sichuan newspaper reports, the protest started with around a dozen people, but by Sunday it had grown as fellow residents and high school students joined them.

By Monday, there was a crowd of thousands, a police officer on duty there told the Chinese newspaper, Global Times. However, the South China Morning Post reported the figure was in the tens of thousands. 

By early Monday afternoon, tensions had escalated and protesters attempted to occupy the city government offices, forcing their way past police inside where they reportedly threw bricks through windows and destroyed offices there. Riot police were brought in to restore order, firing tear gas and stun grenades to break up the crowd.  

Some 13 injuries were initially reported by official state media, but witnesses on the ground reported far more wounded.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, protesters were reportedly still on the streets of Shifang, effectively locked in a standoff.

Local government officials were facing pressure from provincial-level and central government leaders to stifle social unrest.

'No longer suitable for living'
A protester surnamed Wang told NBC News that their numbers had thinned out as the city boosted its police presence.

“The two sides are just standing, facing each other,” Wang said. “There are a lot of police and the roads are blocked.”

“Yesterday, the protesters were all concentrated in front of the government building,” said another protester who requested anonymity. “But today, the police have blocked all the roads around the government building so people cannot concentrate in one area and are scattered everywhere… I am not sure how many people there are, but fewer than yesterday."

Bathed in smog: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off lifespan, expert says

Asked what he would do if construction went ahead on the refinery, the man responded, “As far as I’m concerned, I have settled here, but this place will be no longer suitable for living.” 

“If my economic situation and other conditions meet, I will definitely move away," he added.

Concerns over the pollution created by the alloy refineries that dot China’s resource-rich regions have grown in recent years as China’s economy develops and its people become better educated about the effects of industrial waste on human health.

“I think in general smelters are heavily polluting facilities no matter what, they smelt,” said Ma Tianjie, a Greenpeace campaigner in China specializing in heavy metal waste. “We have seen a lot of cases with heavy metal smelters where there is substantial release of all kinds of toxic pollutants.”

Those pollutants are released into the air through smoke and into the nearby area's ground and water supplies through the highly toxic slag waste that is a byproduct of a refinery’s production phase. Arsenic, an element that can cause severe kidney and liver problems in humans, is often found in worrying levels in this slag.

As these health concerns have become increasingly more public, so too has opposition to these refineries in urban areas.

While companies and local governments have up until now been largely able to duck growing NIMBY-ism in urban centers around China, officials here are increasingly finding themselves accountable for the environmental legacy of these lucrative, but highly polluting industries. 

A legacy that Ma warns can stay with a population for a long time. “Generally the smelters will leave a quite heavy legacy to the local community” he warned, “even decades after the facilities leave.”

Construction suspended
The mass public protest in Shifang has for now, had its desired effect: Late Tuesday afternoon, Shifang’s local Communist Party chief, Li Chengjin, announced through the government’s Weibo microblog feed that the government was halting construction of the refinery and would no longer allow it to go ahead.

“It’s definitely a piece of good news that construction is being halted, this is absolutely what we wanted,” said Wang upon hearing the news of the government’s decision to halt construction.

However, similar recent cases suggest that such success could just be temporary. Last summer, thousands of residents of the northeastern port city of Dalian took to the streets to protest a chemical factory after a dike broke following a storm, potentially exposing the city to the threat of a toxic spill.

Local officials were successful in keeping the crowd peaceful and eventually broke up the protests when they emphatically pledged to halt production at the factory and have it moved out of the city.

But production resumed soon after, though local officials there have stressed since then that the factory was still slated to be moved.

NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.

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BEIJING - A senior Chinese official demanded on Tuesday that foreign embassies stop issuing air pollution readings, saying it was against the law and diplomatic conventions, in pointed criticism of a closely watched U.S. Embassy index.

The level of air pollution in China's heaving capital varies, depending on the wind, but a cocktail of smokestack emissions, vehicle exhaust, dust and aerosols often blankets the city in a pungent, beige shroud for days on end.

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Many residents dismiss the common official readings of "slight" pollution in Beijing as grossly under-stated.

The U.S. Embassy posts hourly air-quality data on its popular Twitter feed, the U.S.-funded Voice of America explains. Using data from a monitoring point on the embassy roof, the feed was set up in 2009 following widespread complaints that official government readings were understating pollution levels in the smog-filled capital city, the VoA reported.

While China tightened air pollution monitoring standards in January, the official reading and the U.S. Embassy reading can often be far apart.

Chinese experts have criticized the single U.S. Embassy monitoring point as "unscientific".

Deputy Environment Minister Wu Xiaoqing went a step further, saying such readings were illegal and should stop, though he did not directly name the United States.

"According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations ... foreign diplomats are required to respect and follow local laws and cannot interfere in internal affairs," Wu told a news conference.

"China's air quality monitoring and information release involve the public interest and are up to the government. Foreign consulates in China taking it on themselves to monitor air quality and release the information online not only goes against the spirit of the Vienna Convention ... it also contravenes relevant environmental protection rules."

The U.S. Embassy acknowledges on its website that its equipment cannot be relied upon for general monitoring, saying "citywide analysis cannot be done ... on data from a lone machine".

Embassy officials were not immediately available for comment on Wu's criticism.

Wu said China's air quality standards were drawn up in consultation with the World Health Organisation and "accorded with the present situation in our country".

Despite his criticism, Wu acknowledged that China's air quality and overall environmental situation remained precarious, with more than one tenth of monitored rivers rated severely polluted, for example.

Wu said the government was studying a long-mooted environment tax on polluting industries, though he did not give a timetable for when it might come into effect nor give details of how the tax might work.

"We need to make sure that certain companies are fulfilling their environmental obligations," he added. The tax "will ensure companies bear a corresponding cost for the damage and pollution their emissions cause". 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Canada has been sending letters to government scientists notifying them that their jobs will be eliminated or affected by the closure of the country's marine pollution program -- but at least one isn't going without making some noise.

"It's perplexing that we face the loss of this program, given the 25,000 chemicals on the market and the ever-increasing threats posed by shipping and oil and gas exploration and development in temperate and Arctic waters," Peter Ross told msnbc.com. Ross is perhaps Canada's best known marine scientist for his work on identifying killer whales as the most contaminated marine mammals on the planet. 

"As can be expected when one is told their position is being terminated, one is shocked and saddened," he added. "However, when told that the entire pollution research and monitoring program for Canada's oceans is being eliminated, I was speechless."

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The program, which employs 75 staff, is set to be shut down by April 1, 2013, the Victoria Times Colonist reported. 

"I cannot think of another industrialized nation that has completely excised marine pollution from its radar," Ross said.

The program is under the Department of Fisheries, which is shedding a total of 400 jobs. More than 600 others will be "affected." Of the some 1,000 jobs impacted, three quarters are with the Canadian Coast Guard.

A Department of Fisheries spokesperson told the Colonist that the cuts would produce $79 million in savings and that an advisory group from academia and the private sector would instead provide advice.

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Ross countered that those groups wouldn't be as accountable as government agencies are. "I can't think of any scientist or agency outside of government that is held to account on issues related to public health, the health of marine fish or mammals, or the identification of emerging pollution concerns in the coastal environment," he said.

Ross also published an opinion piece, titled "Silent Summer," on environmentalhealthnews.org. He concludes:

"It is with apprehension that I ponder a Canada without any research or monitoring capacity for pollution in our three oceans, or any ability to manage its impacts on commercial fish stocks, traditional foods for over 300,000 aboriginal people and marine wildlife. 

"Canada's silence on these issues will be deafening this summer and beyond."

So what's the plan for Ross? "My personal and professional hope," he said, "is to transfer somehow to a university where I will be able to continue to work on ocean pollution priorities."

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In a bid to track sea pollution by mimicking how fish navigate and work together, scientists on Tuesday moved their robotic fish from the lab to the sea.

The technology could reduce the time it takes to detect a pollutant from weeks to just seconds, the scientists said in a statement. It could also aid underwater security, diver monitoring and search and rescue efforts.

Partly funded by the European Union, the SHOAL Consortium deployed its test robots at the northern Spanish port of Gijon on Tuesday.

The fish -- 5 feet long and costing about $31,600 each -- are designed to swim like real fish and have sensors to pick up pollutants.

---

They swim independently but coordinate their actions and send data back to a shore station more than a half mile away.

"Chemical sensors fitted to the fish permit real-time, in-situ analysis, rather than the current method of sample collection and dispatch to a shore-based laboratory," Luke Speller, a SHOAL scientist who led the project, said in the statement.

Through artificial intelligence software, the fish can avoid obstacles, map their location and return to base when their eight-hour batteries run low, SHOAL stated.

"Significantly," SHOAL added, "the robotic fish have been developed to blend into the marine environment in such a way that marine life is neither disrupted nor impacted in any negative way by their presence, but carries on naturally."

So what happens if one is mistakenly caught by a fisherman? "The fish are able to detect where they are with the array of sensors they have," the researchers say on the Frequently Asked Questions section of their website. "As soon as they are removed from the water they set off a distress beacon that alerts the port authorities who can act immediately."

And why even design them to look like fish? They "have an incredibly small turning circle allowing them to navigate quickly in ports both to find pollution and avoid ships and the port infrastructure," the researchers added. "It's also low noise so as to not disturb the environment when outside of busy ports."

After testing this week, the team will make any modifications needed to move the fish into commercial production.

The project draws on expertise from the University of Essex and the University of Strathclyde in Britain; Ireland's Tyndall National Institute; and Thales Safare, part of Europe's largest defense electronics group.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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