US Tweets China Air Pollution, Again

Following on the success of the US Embassy Twitter feed on the air pollution, BeijingAir, the US Consulate in Guangzhou this month followed suit, with Guangzhou_Air.

Launched with little fanfare last week, the US Consulate has installed air quality monitoring equipment that now Tweets at 9am and 2pm each day.

Why is the US government doing this?

The official statement says it is an unofficial resource for the health of the Consulate community. Unofficially, it is because there is skepticism about the numbers produced by the Chinese government.

My suggestion: It would be great if the US government set up a similar Twitter feed in Hong Kong and then created a Compare the Air app which allowed people to see which city suffered the worst air pollution on a given day.

Clearly a single pollution monitor on top of a single building does not represent the city-wide state of pollution, but these Twitter feeds show the power of trusted data.


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