FDX: Another Reason to Avoid Guangzhou
12-09-2007, 04:39 PM
#1
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FDX: Another Reason to Avoid Guangzhou
Good thing we'll only have to operate in/out of the FedEx hub at Guangzhou ... maybe living 3 hours away will minimize the health risks our families will suffer (and Hong Kong is pollution-free, right?). Perhaps we should be glad families with children weren't overly enticed by the tuition assistance aspects of the LOA and are avoiding this FDA.
From the International Herald Tribune:
SPOUSE: "Merry Christmas, honey!"
PILOT: "Wow, a portable oxygen system..."
SPOUSE: "I thought you might like one for your commute to work."
PILOT: "Cool, then I'll just switch to the walkaround bottle for my preflight."
From the International Herald Tribune:
GUANGZHOU, China: Every night, columns of hulking blue and red freight trucks invade China's major cities with a reverberating roar of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims headlights. By daybreak in this sprawling metropolis in southeastern China, residents near thoroughfares who left their windows open overnight find their faces stiff with a dark layer of diesel soot.
Trucks are the mules of this country's spectacularly expanding economy - ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious. Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel. While car sales in China are now growing even faster than truck sales, trucks are by far the largest source of street-level pollution.
Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents' lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China's growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can cause severe coughing and asthma.
Link to full article (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/07/asia/china.php). Trucks are the mules of this country's spectacularly expanding economy - ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious. Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel. While car sales in China are now growing even faster than truck sales, trucks are by far the largest source of street-level pollution.
Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents' lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China's growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can cause severe coughing and asthma.
SPOUSE: "Merry Christmas, honey!"
PILOT: "Wow, a portable oxygen system..."
SPOUSE: "I thought you might like one for your commute to work."
PILOT: "Cool, then I'll just switch to the walkaround bottle for my preflight."
12-09-2007, 05:16 PM
#2
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Posts: 478
12-09-2007, 05:19 PM
#3
done, gone skiing
Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Rocking chair
Posts: 1,602
Chinese pollution
I had a HKG layover a couple weeks ago with a subsequent daylight departure for Almaty. The weather was clear, well it wasn't cloudy 
The pollution in HKG seems to me, looking out from the gym at the Sheraton Hotel, as worse than I ever remember. The hills look blue, the sky a dull gray.
In departing HKG for ALA, we fly North from HKG than bare West, a good view out the left side of the Pearl delta, with the cites of Shenzhen and Guangzhou easily in sight. Again, a nice day (by Chinese standards) no obvious clouds but a haze so thick around a mass of humanity that was both aught inspiring and sad. This part of China is in the grip of a sea of pollution that will create problems worldwide, let along within their own country or over the mountains in HKG. Good luck to those of you moving into this cesspool, I hope you have a strong respiratory system, you going to need it.
The pollution in HKG seems to me, looking out from the gym at the Sheraton Hotel, as worse than I ever remember. The hills look blue, the sky a dull gray. In departing HKG for ALA, we fly North from HKG than bare West, a good view out the left side of the Pearl delta, with the cites of Shenzhen and Guangzhou easily in sight. Again, a nice day (by Chinese standards) no obvious clouds but a haze so thick around a mass of humanity that was both aught inspiring and sad. This part of China is in the grip of a sea of pollution that will create problems worldwide, let along within their own country or over the mountains in HKG. Good luck to those of you moving into this cesspool, I hope you have a strong respiratory system, you going to need it.
12-09-2007, 05:41 PM
#4
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Posts: 2,889
The future century belongs to the first one out there that develops cheaper, CLEAN power. I hope the boys in Livermore beat the ones in Banglore or the Pearl Delta or Kaoshung, but the country that figures that one out will be the leader for the next century. Those who don't will choke on their own fumes trying to catch up.
I'm an optimist, and I'm betting on us. Here's hoping...
I'm an optimist, and I'm betting on us. Here's hoping...
12-09-2007, 08:23 PM
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Good thing we'll only have to operate in/out of the FedEx hub at Guangzhou ... maybe living 3 hours away will minimize the health risks our families will suffer (and Hong Kong is pollution-free, right?). Perhaps we should be glad families with children weren't overly enticed by the tuition assistance aspects of the LOA and are avoiding this FDA.
From the International Herald Tribune:
SPOUSE: "Merry Christmas, honey!"
PILOT: "Wow, a portable oxygen system..."
SPOUSE: "I thought you might like one for your commute to work."
PILOT: "Cool, then I'll just switch to the walkaround bottle for my preflight."
From the International Herald Tribune:
GUANGZHOU, China: Every night, columns of hulking blue and red freight trucks invade China's major cities with a reverberating roar of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims headlights. By daybreak in this sprawling metropolis in southeastern China, residents near thoroughfares who left their windows open overnight find their faces stiff with a dark layer of diesel soot.
Trucks are the mules of this country's spectacularly expanding economy - ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious. Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel. While car sales in China are now growing even faster than truck sales, trucks are by far the largest source of street-level pollution.
Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents' lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China's growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can cause severe coughing and asthma.
Link to full article (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/07/asia/china.php). SPOUSE: "Merry Christmas, honey!"
PILOT: "Wow, a portable oxygen system..."
SPOUSE: "I thought you might like one for your commute to work."
PILOT: "Cool, then I'll just switch to the walkaround bottle for my preflight."
I'm sure you've never bought anything that's MADE IN CHINA, right?
12-10-2007, 08:24 AM
#7
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Unbelievable.....get Al Gore on the phone NOW!
12-10-2007, 11:44 AM
#8
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Posts: 1,054
12-10-2007, 11:51 AM
#9
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Posts: 2,838
12-10-2007, 11:57 AM
#10
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Position: Retired
Posts: 3,717
This morning I watched Al Gore's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a very good speech, in which he briefly hammered two nations for their lack of effort or concern with his main mission, that of global warming. He praised some of the European community, as well as Australia and Japan for both their efforts as well as their future plans for cleaning up global emissions. The two nations that he hammered were, as you suspected, China, and (you might not have suspected this) The United States. Both for what they pump into the atmosphere, as well as their apparent lack of concern for the future of this planet. That's not to say I'd enjoy living in China, because I've been there a ton and each and every time I would overfly that country, I'd never be able to see the ground. I always thought that was because the Chinese leadership made their air that way to stop our "prying eyes."
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