相对公平的评论 --- Smog fears are all hot air

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Smog fears are all hot airMarc Hinton in Beijing | August 8, 2008 - 7:40AM

The assignment: Run the Beijing gauntlet, and put the Olympic city to the pollution test.
The course: A gentle 10km lope from the Hui Yuan Media Village around the Games venues.
The participants: Fairfax Media's Marc Hinton and Jonathan Millmow.
The conclusion: Hot, humid, but hardly a health hazard.

The Americans have their masks, the world its doubts, but for a couple of Fairfax Media hacks on Olympic assignment in China all this rhetoric about Beijing's pollution problem is nothing but a lot of hot air.

My colleague, Jonathan Millmow, and myself have been in the Olympic city for a few days now and we figured it was time to find out for ourselves if this problem is as bad as some are making it out to be. We're well past our sporting prime, but still fit enough to take the rubber to the road and put in a few hard yards in the name of a good yarn.

And, let's face it, Beijing has been getting a fairly bad rap because of the smoggy haze that seems to hang over it around about every second day if the last week has been anything to go by. People are convinced there's a pollution problem, and some, such as Ethiopia's marathon legend Haile Gebrselassie, are not even prepared to put their bodies at risk because of it.

Many in the American team have taken to wearing those awful air filter masks, and complaints have littered the Olympic environment over the buildup to the Games from concerned athletes worried about the damage being done by this bad air. Even the New Zealand swim team have been issued masks, but being the good Kiwis they are have been far too embarrassed to don them thus far.

To be fair it does look bad. When the smoggy haze sets in it hangs about like, well, a bad smell, hovering over the architectural wonderland of tall buildings that stud the landscape of this huge city. The eye certainly tells you that something isn't quite right.

But is it really that bad? That dangerous?

Well, after our test run the only conclusion we could draw was that people are being deceived by their eyes. It's hot, damn hot, and that alone is enough to be a concern for any athlete in endurance events. But in terms of breathing the air, and putting the lungs to the test, it appeared to be no worse than running in London, New York, Paris, or any other big city in the world.
This was our second gallop of the week, with a shorter test event a few days earlier netting a similar conclusion, though a wrong turn negotiating our way back to the media village added a little to the stress levels.

Millmow, who played cricket for New Zealand in some warm venues in his time, was convinced Beijing has been getting a bad rap.

There was no watering of the eyes, no breathing difficulty and certainly no discomfort. Just a sapping humidity in the air that is going to test the athletes to their limits over the next fortnight or so.

So come on everybody, let's see through this smog issue and start seeing Beijing for what it really is. A hot place to hold the Olympics.

[ 本帖最后由 xiaobai 于 2008-8-8 14:31 编辑 ]