Over the past few months, China has experienced its fair share of air pollution like smog. It is because the air pollution in the country last month has jumped up to alarming levels.
According to China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, the heavy amount of smog covering the northern and northeastern regions of China is primarily the main reason why the air pollution of the entire nation is rising. Six of the cities outside the nation's capital province are included in the list of top 10 countries with the most polluted air. The cities of Xingtai, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Langfang, Tangshan and Hengshui experienced the highest level of polluted air last month. They are accompanied by other cities like Jinan, Shenyang, Harbin and Changchun, all of which are parts of the Shandong province.
According to the list, Shenyang has experienced the most air pollution last month of November. The ministry has also said that based on the dates bracket of Nov. 1 to Nov. 13, 34 out of 36 cities of the country's three northern provinces are severely polluted, while 10 out of 13 cities in China's central provinces are also heavily polluted.
The three northern provinces in China are heavily covered with haze for the first two weeks of November. The primary cause of it is people are starting to use coal for heating purposes. Due to the dense cold air, the smoke didn't thoroughly spread out and in fact stayed in the same place, cloaking the places one after the other.
This ultimately caused the extreme readings of PM2.5, which is recorded in Shenyang in November. It's an alarming rate considering that the nation's safety level only stands at 75.
Beijing also experienced a spike in PM readings. Just last month, the nation's capital registered a PM2.5 reading, although it is alright considering that Beijing is smaller than other provinces, but still, it was able to increase a whopping 39 percent from October's reading. These studies and measurements were released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection just this December.