Yesterday, a pollution sign in Seoul implied that breathing-in too much was not in your best interest:
Roadside pollution sign in Guro, Seoul, January 2014
Hour-by-hour PM-10 air pollution level
for Guro, Seoul, January 2014. [From AirKorea.or.kr]
I’m staying in Seoul’s Guro District in January 2014. The above sign reported that my temporary place of residence had, on the afternoon of January 16th, a “PM-10” pollution level of 139 micrograms per cubic meter of air, which is very high. Later that evening, it exceeded 150 (the orange in the chart), and stayed over 150 for twenty-one hours.
I don’t know why this pollution spike occurred.
The above sign also asserts that 100 is the “safety limit”, though the USA and EU say that anything above 50 is harmful to human health.
I don’t know why this pollution spike occurred.
The above sign also asserts that 100 is the “safety limit”, though the USA and EU say that anything above 50 is harmful to human health.
I frequently look at these real-time pollution signs in Korea. It may be that 139 is the highest PM-10 level I’ve ever noticed, except of course for “yellow dust” season, the pollution spikes of which I wrote about way back in post-12 [“The Sky Betook an Awful Shade”].
To compare with home, the Washington DC region’s PM-10 air-pollution yearly average is 18 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the WHO. Seoul rarely sees levels that low, maybe only after vigorous rainstorms clear all the junk out of the air.