BEIJING — Smog choking central and eastern China caused authorities Saturday to issue an orange alert as the number of people seeking treatment in hospitals for respiratory problems jumped and sales of air filters and masks skyrocketed.
The alert was raised from yellow to the second-highest level on China’s four-tier warning system for extreme weather, in which red is the highest, as the pollution reduced visibility to a soup, disrupted flights and caused many people to stay home.
“It stinks like smoke,” a woman in Shanghai said. “The air really scratches in your throat. We’ve never experienced such terrible smog.”
Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Henan provinces have suffered smog for six consecutive days, the Xinhua news agency said, while other central and eastern regions have experienced three to five days of smog.
“It is like a disaster movie,” one angry online post said.
Nanjing, Jiangsu’s capital, was under a red alert, and Shanghai has been plagued by high levels of air pollution after air masses carried industrial emissions from neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
Shanghai authorities on Friday halted all construction work and ordered children indoors as the financial hub suffered one of its worst bouts of air pollution.
Officials also reduced bus service by one-third and cancelled some flights to and from Shanghai airport.
The city’s concentration of harmful fine particles in the air reached 602 micrograms per cubic meter Friday, 24 times higher than the level considered tolerable by the World Health Organization.
By Saturday, the figure had fallen to 484 micrograms and then an “unhealthy” 186 by evening. Beijing’s index rose to a “dangerous” 459 by Saturday night.
