Slideshow: air pollution in Beijing

Sean Gallagher — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:20:00 +0000

As the Olympics approach, athletes have raised concerns about the Chinese capital’s smoggy skies. A series of haunting pictures by Beijing-based photographer Sean Gallagher illustrates the problem.

EDITOR'S NOTE: These pictures were all taken by Sean Gallagher, a British photographer based in China, between June 26 and July 2, 2008. All of the photographs were taken in Beijing, and most of them depict vehicles that have been left or abandoned under the raised ring roads in the city centre. In this series, the photographer has not set out to show ordinary cars in the Chinese capital; he uses abandoned vehicles as static objects, which illustrate the quantity of dust and sand that accumulates in the city's air. Some of this dust is from naturally occurring sandstorms, but – as the photographer points out in his comment – much of it also comes from the booming construction industry.

Backgrounder: air pollution in China

Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. More than 500 million people live in Chinese urban areas including the capital, Beijing, where air pollution is damaging to human health.

“Extensive use of coal, the city’s location and the growing number of cars means the improvement in Beijing’s air quality is slow,” the Associated Press quoted Eric Falt, an official at the United Nations Environment Program, as saying last October. “Particularly worrying are the levels of small particulate matter… in the atmosphere which is severely harmful to public health.”

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Air Pollution Index (API) is a measurement of concentrations of chemicals and dust particles in the air. The WHO recommends an API measurement of 50 as its maximum safe daily level. May 2008 saw a daily API average of 131 in Beijing. May 27, 2008, saw the capital’s API peak at 463, over nine times the safe level.

As the Beijing Olympics approach, concerns are being raised about the quality of the air in the capital, particularly by athletes, some of whom have proposed wearing masks during the competition, training in other countries, or even pulling out of events.

Whatever happens at the Olympics, Beijing residents will continue to live with smoggy skies after the Games. According to the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, the country’s air pollution caused over 400,000 premature deaths in 2003.

Sean Gallagher is a British photographer based in Beijing. His work focuses on environmental and social issues in Asia, with specific emphasis on China. More of his work can be seen at www.gallagher-photo.com

China’s creeping sands

Sean Gallagher — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:21:00 +0000

Growing sands are transforming China’s arable land, with nearly 20% of the country’s land area classified as desert. A slideshow by photographer Sean Gallagher documents the issue, which affects the lives of an estimated 400 million people.

Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and habitable land into desert, normally caused by climate change or the destructive use of land. Each year, desertification and drought account for US$42 billion loss in food productivity worldwide.

It is estimated that nearly 20% of China's land area, some 1.74 million square kilometres, is now classified as desert. Affecting the lives of an estimated 400 million people, it is one of the most important environmental issues in China today.

Riding on China’s “desertification train”, which passes through the country’s driest and hardest-hit provinces – Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu and Xinjiang – Sean Gallagher travelled over 4,000 kilometres to document the environmental challenges along the route.

You can read Sean Gallagher’s dispatches from the field [in English] here

Latest Articles by Sean Gallagher

Slideshow: air pollution in Beijing

China’s creeping sands