Pyeongchang 2018 Covered in Toxic Sino Ejaculate?

So today in a Bloomberg Opinion piece Adam Minter raised his criticism against China for pursuing its bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games to be held in Zhangjiakou city.¹  For those of you who don't know, that city happens to be located in Hebei Province, the most polluted province in all of China.

Ok.  That is bad, but what about the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics that will be held in Gangwon Province, South Korea? Seoul and Gangwon Province to be sure are right smack dab in the middle latitudes of Hebei and are separated only by the West Sea.  So for example on a day like February 24th 2014, when winds from the northwest - and more importantly all the shitty ultra-fine and fine dust floating in the atmosphere around mainland China's polluted eastern coast (e.g. Hebei Province) - ride the high pressure system over the West Sea and mix with all the pollution already conveniently on top of the Korean Peninsula, the result is toxic air for Korea.  To be precise the recorded high so far today (13:00) from Gangwon Province and Seoul in terms of fine dust is 203㎍/㎥ and 218㎍/㎥ with averages at around 111㎍/㎥ and 146㎍/㎥ respectively.²  The recorded highs are both "very bad" according to the scale of fine dust levels that ranges from 0~201+㎍/㎥ with both averages falling in the "kinda bad" category of 81~120㎍/㎥.

As I indicated above, the host province of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics sits uncomfortably in the line of fire of these periodic Sino-ejaculations of toxic smog that seem to flare up in the Winter months for reasons I have mentioned in a previous post.³  While the argument will surely be made that the air levels are better in the mountain areas where the competitions will take place, even if levels are in the "normal" range of 31~80㎍/㎥, I can tell you from first hand experience from running outdoors during "normal" 76㎍/㎥ - on the side of a mother fucking mountain mind you - for a duration of no longer than 18 minutes at a speed of approximately 13km per hour, blows hard.  From the yellow/greenish snotty discharge in the hours immediately following the run to the wheezing that lingers into the next day (full disclosure: I have had asthma since I was a child, but had not experienced symptoms as an adult, until now) it is no  for those of us who are sensitive to toxic smog.

In conclusion I just want to take my hat off to Mr. Minter for raising awareness on the issue of China's toxic smog.  At the same time, more attention should be paid to those nations that are affected by it as well, like by those same nations themselves! It kills me how Viktor Ahn (a.k.a. 안현수 선수) can become a top national agenda pursued by the President herself,⁴ but toxic smog receives mere lip-service  from apathetic talking heads during the news discussed like some necessary evil that we should learn to live with (or more likely die from).


¹ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-23/goodbye-sochi-slush-hello-china-smog-.html

² http://search.naver.com/search.naver?where=nexearch&query=%EB%AF%B8%EC%84%B8%EB%A8%BC%EC%A7%80%EB%86%8D%EB%8F%84%ED%99%95%EC%9D%B8&sm=top_hty&fbm=1&acr=2&acq=%EB%AF%B8%EC%84%B8&qdt=0&ie=utf8

³ http://kayageetheworld.blogspot.kr/2014/01/air-pussy_4.html

⁴ http://news.sbs.co.kr/section_news/news_read.jsp?news_id=N1002238284