中國嚴重霧霾波及近5億人大綱

The government has shut schools, restricted road traffic and urged people to stay indoors as 24 cities across northeast China were put on “red alert” for extreme smog on Tuesday.

政府關閉了學校，限制了道路交通，並敦促人們留在室內。週二，華北24個城市發佈了極端霧霾“紅色警報”。

China's most severe bout of air pollution this year has hit 460m people, who are exposed to smog levels six times higher than the World Health Organisation’s daily guidelines, according to calculations by Greenpeace. The smog has lasted over three days in many areas.

根據綠色和平組織(Greenpeace)的計算，中國今年最嚴重的大氣污染已影響了4.6億人，污染程度是世界衛生組織(WHO)日常指標的六倍。在許多地區，霧霾天氣已持續了三天。

As of 11am local time, 217 flights at Beijing Capital Airport had been cancelled — almost a third of the total scheduled for the whole day.

截至當地時間上午11點，北京首都國際機場(Beijing Capital International Airport)的217次航班——接近全天預定航班的三分之一——被取消了。

“The link between smog and industry is clear. Since the second quarter of this year, when steel prices and output started growing, we saw air quality decline in the northeast,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an air pollution specialist at Greenpeace in Beijing. “It’s a result of the government’s old-fashioned stimulus that boosted the industrial sectors.”

“煙霧和工業之間的聯繫是顯而易見的。今年第二季度，當鋼鐵價格上升、產量增加時，我們看到華北的空氣質量在下降，”綠色和平組織駐北京的空氣污染專家柳力(Lauri Myllyvirta)說。“這是政府用舊式刺激措施提振工業部門帶來的結果。”

China’s smog is worst in the winter, when households consume more electricity from coal-fired power plants, and municipal heating is turned on.

中國的霧霾在冬季裏是最糟糕的。冬季時，家庭消耗更多由燃煤發電廠生產的電能，並且城市供暖系統開始運行。

In response to the emergency, the Ministry of Environmental Protection sent out three inspection teams, and publicly singled out chemical manufacturing companies that had failed to shut down their operations under the red-alert regulations, as well as power plants and coal-burning plants that had not met environmental standards.

爲了應對緊急污染，中國環保部派出了三個檢查組，公開挑出了沒有按照紅色警報管理規定停產的化工企業，以及不符合環保標準的發電廠和燃煤工廠。

The northeastern port city of Tianjin closed all but one of the highways in and out of the city because of poor visibility on the weekend. Over 30 flights were grounded at its international airport over the weekend.

上週末，由於能見度過低，華北港口城市天津封閉了幾乎所有進出該市的公路（僅保留一條）。上週末，有30多個航班停靠在天津國際機場。

Beijing, which has been on red alert since Friday, halved the number of motor vehicles allowed on the road on any given day by banning even- and odd-numbered license-plates on different days. Ikea said that customer deliveries would be slower because of the vehicle restrictions while Taobao, China’s most popular online marketplace, warned customers that packages might be delayed because of the smog.

自上週五以來一直處於霧霾紅色警戒狀態的北京，採取了單雙號限號措施，把每日允許上路的機動車數量減少了一半。 宜家(Ikea)表示，由於車輛限行，客戶交付速度將會變慢，而中國最熱門在線購物平臺淘寶(Taobao)警告客戶稱，包裹可能會因爲霧霾而延遲到貨。