Black and Blue

 Austin took a screen shot of the Beijing AQI (Air Quality idex) on one of Beijing's 500 days.  The AQI only measures up to 500.  Seattle averages a 30 AQI.  Cigarette smoke measures 67 AQI.  The Chinese Government canceled all flights on this day as an emergency measure, however they claimed the canceled flights were "due to fog."  The Chinese Government has been jamming any "unapproved" AQI sites this past month.




I finally broke down and bought an air purifier today. If you read my post "The Canary Dies at 500" you perhaps can appreciate the magnitude of Beijing's pollution. On days when the wind is still, we cannot see our neighboring high-rise buildings and our apartment lobby is shrouded in a ghostly brown mist.  The air stinks, your hair stinks, your clothes stink, your skin stinks, your house stinks, your dog stinks.  Maybe your dog stinks anyway.  Within minutes, smoogers-- "smog boogers"-- crust up your nose and your skin responds with an angry rash.

Austin took a picture from the balcony of our Apartment.  There is another high-rise next to our building, though you can't see it due to pollution.




Living in the land of the EPA, you can't possibly imagine what I am talking about.  You want to live vicariously though us you say?  Well, here is a fun family activity:  1. Grind those Kingsford charcoal briquettes moldering on your deck to a fine dust  2. Put the coal ash on some newspaper and mist it with Lysol or whatever toxic cleaner you use to kill germs.  3.) Take the slightly damp powder into your  home.  4. Take a large fan, tilt it down on the pile.  4) Gun the fan and stand like you are model in front of a blower.  5) Feel the chlorine, arsenic, mercury, chromium, sulfur, lead and radionuclides bathing your every atom.  Inhale the eau de Beijing. 6) Cough. Hoark up a throat cocktail.  7) Celebrate by buying the whole family toxic shit from China.  Repeat.

I bought a brand new Blue Air, Model E for Extortion, Air purifier. They are so expensive I am hoping I can at least rig it up for secondary use, say, put some wheels on it some day and drive it. I've held off so long because I'm not entirely convinced air purifiers work. Years ago I read in Consumer Reports that air purifiers were garbage, a total scam. Granted, this Blue Air ain't no Sharper Image ionic tower.  It's bigger than an air conditioner.  Blue Air tells me I will get miraculous results and would they lie?  Plus, expats swear by them.

I only bought one purifier and it's for the boys' room. Austin and I are emphesyma expendable. Not even Austin's current cough--the worst he has ever had--convinced him that we need to fork over the kids' college funds to buy a second purifier.  Twelve days of coughing so hard he pukes and he is holding firm.  That's one stubborn, cheap-ass man.

I myself was hoping to dither so much on the topic that we would actually be packing to return home before I made a decision; however, it was Eli's recent "reactive lung" diagnosis that had me speed-dialing Blue Air. Reactive lung disease is a step below asthma; thankfully, he does not have the total airway closure of asthma. Instead, sickness or exposure to pollutants make his lungs swell, causing searing pain and rib-cracking coughing jags that can plague him for weeks.

Reactive Lung Disease is genetic so Eli's diagnosis was my diagnosis, 36 years after the fact. Turns out three generations of the Duncan/Tracy ladies that came prior all have inflammatory lungs. Finally my own "weak constitution" made more sense. Nobody spoke much in my family, but I do remember overhearing that my grandmother had to move from toxic Los Angeles to Tucson in the early sixties because her kids' coughing kept them out of school.  Flash to the night when I was seven and I witnessed my grandmother doubled over in her tiny kitchen coughing so badly she could barely breathe and hearing the crack of her ribs, a sound I will never forget.  My whole life I have had difficulty shaking colds.  Coughs linger for months.  I cracked two of my own ribs from hacking.

Eli rarely gets sick but when he does the fevers spike and and body-racking coughs persist well after the contagion period. The lung swelling makes a person more susceptible to pneumonia and Eli got pneumonia last year with 105 fever after ice and Tylenol.  It took us moving to Beijing to understand truly how sensitive your bodies are.  (This from a girl who vomits if she walks down the conventional household cleaner aisle in the grocery store.)  When I wake up in the morning, I can tell you what the AQI is just based on how bad my lungs hurt.

Now that we uprooted Eli and dropped him in a virtual coal mine, I am feeling totally guilty.  As our already departed expat friends said:  "You have to buy the air purifiers.  Sure, they might be rubbish, but if your kids get lung cancer in their lifetime, you're gonna blame yourself."

Right then.  1-800-BLUEAIR.  I'd like a unit for each room.  Take everything I got as collateral.  I promise I will try not to dwell on the hypocrisy of buying an air purifier that uses coal-fired electricity.