中国严重雾霾波及近5亿人

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.

政府关闭了学校，限制了道路交通，并敦促人们留在室内。周二，华北24个城市发布了极端雾霾“红色警报”。

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.

根据绿色和平组织(Greenpeace)的计算，中国今年最严重的大气污染已影响了4.6亿人，污染程度是世界卫生组织(WHO)日常指标的六倍。在许多地区，雾霾天气已持续了三天。

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.

截至当地时间上午11点，北京首都国际机场(Beijing Capital International Airport)的217次航班——接近全天预定航班的三分之一——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.”

“烟雾和工业之间的联系是显而易见的。今年第二季度，当钢铁价格上升、产量增加时，我们看到华北的空气质量在下降，”绿色和平组织驻北京的空气污染专家柳力(Lauri Myllyvirta)说。“这是政府用旧式刺激措施提振工业部门带来的结果。”

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

中国的雾霾在冬季里是最糟糕的。冬季时，家庭消耗更多由燃煤发电厂生产的电能，并且城市供暖系统开始运行。

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.

为了应对紧急污染，中国环保部派出了三个检查组，公开挑出了没有按照红色警报管理规定停产的化工企业，以及不符合环保标准的发电厂和燃煤工厂。

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.

上周末，由于能见度过低，华北港口城市天津封闭了几乎所有进出该市的公路（仅保留一条）。上周末，有30多个航班停靠在天津国际机场。

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.

自上周五以来一直处于雾霾红色警戒状态的北京，采取了单双号限号措施，把每日允许上路的机动车数量减少了一半。 宜家(Ikea)表示，由于车辆限行，客户交付速度将会变慢，而中国最热门在线购物平台淘宝(Taobao)警告客户称，包裹可能会因为雾霾而延迟到货。