Air pollution

The air has actually been pretty good here in Ha'erbin. Until last week. Last Thursday was a bit cloudy/foggy, but both me and my roommate woke up a bit weird. I went running that afternoon and felt a uncomfortable burning sensation in my chest. That night a i had the symptoms of a mild sinus infection and began self medicating.

Friday was worse, in regard to the sinuses. I was mostly cured by Monday. I didnt know that the air was bad Thursday-Saturday until Monday when I had a look at the Chinese EPA Air quality website. I found this little graph.

The first value(81) is Sunday(10/19) Friday is the 273. The values correspond to the Chinese air quality index, which is similar to the US EPA's AQI. The Chinese index as the same scale and same categories. I was a bit suspicious of this, so I investigate how both were calculated. Turns out they are not so similar. The indexes are based on 5 pollutants (SO2 , NO2 , Particles, CO, and O3). Only Particles and O3 are the same for both indexes. SO2 and CO both have much higher thresholds in the Chinese index. NO2 for 100+ and above all surpass US standards.
Sorry the table is ugly, blogspot is messing with the row height.

Chinese API	SO2		CO
	US AQI		US AQI
50	28		46
100	60		86
200	198		500+
300	299		500+
400	500+		500+
500	500+		500+

Interesting enough since Sunday, the Chinese EPA air quality website has been "down".

From the EPA website:

Air Quality Index	Numerical		Meaning
Levels of Health Concern	Value	Colors
Good	0-50	Green	Air quality is considered satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.
Moderate	51-100	Yellow	Air quality is acceptable; however, for some pollutants there may be a moderate health concern for a very small number of people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution.
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	101-150	Orange	Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects. The general public is not likely to be affected.
Unhealthy	151-200	Red	Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.
Very Unhealthy	201-300	Purple	Health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects.
Hazardous	> 300	Maroon	Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected.