The effects of the sandstorm in China will continue to degrade the air quality in central Taiwan on Friday and Saturday, the EPA said, adding that it had taken some measures to avoid an escalation of the problem.
These included a directive to the state-run Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) and private thermal power plants to reduce their coal-fired generated power on Wednesday and Thursday in response to the poor air quality.
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See? Air quality is back to normal now.
It clearly says population weighted. So that table is more about whatâs your share of PM2.5 to sniff it, and not really just how dirty the air is in one city.
Per capitaâŠ
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Bwahahahaha
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Then thatâs even better. Population weighted average is usually higher than spatial average, so this means Taipei has even better air.
AQI is yellow now.
Yes it looks yellow outside.
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Not necessarily. Also, when it comes to HOW DIRTY THE AIR IS, it is irrelevant to factor in how many people live in there. That would be just one of the factors to analyse the composite of the reasons, and if itâs reasonable level or not given how many people need services, power, to move, etc.
I donât care how it may or may not affect the numbers to do it population weighted, because again that would tell you about the habits and PERHAPS the efficiency, but mostly about the shit foot print per capita. But what we are discussing here is how dirty it IS.
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Stats have shown that air quality in Taipei is CLEANER than in most European capital cities. Just accept it.
Show me the statistics and I have no problem to accept it. Also, what European cities? You mean Eastern Europe? Also, was this ever about if European capitals were dirtier than Taipei, a city in a tiny piece of green land in the sea?
And I know that this is just a snapshot in time, but since @Gain is posting irrelevant data and making wild claims, I guess I can do this no problem.
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https://i.imgur.com/Wa5aTVE.png
https://i.imgur.com/b3pLRYw.png
Do you need me to show a random bad day in London to compare? I can.
Lol of course you picked the 2010 data to compare Taipei with London in 2019.
Stop being such a baby and just accept the stats.
Back to normal 
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100 bad
99 yellow good
I said normal. Not good. Green is good. Yellow is normal.
You could and it would be pretty much what youâve been doing: posting random things, like data corrected by population 
Again, thatâs a snapshot of one city in Europe, which doesnât represent how things always are, doesnât represent whole Europe, and doesnât really mean how good or bad the air is in Taiwan.
BTW, this isnât a random DAY:
I didnât choose 2010 data. I posted the one I found. Let me see what else I can find:
Thatâs the average, we see lots of green days (it rains a lot and thereâs a lot of wind in Taiwan, leave alone we are surrounded by water). Would be interesting to see the max numbersâŠ
Happy now?
Want to look now at Taichung, Kaohsiung and others?
And all of this is just PM2.5, which is not really the only problem or the biggest one we have in Taiwan:
Why is Taipei polluted?
The main source of Taipeiâs polluted air is from the burning of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, its position makes the situation worse as it is surrounded by high mountains which trap the air and prevent it from being blown away. In 2014 the Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance released figures showing the level of Taipeiâs poor air quality. The average reading of PM10 was 47.1 ”g/mÂł which placed it at 1,089 among 1,600 cities around the world. It was also reported that over the last decade, the figure was in excess of the European Union limit value which was 40 ”g/mÂł.
Another main contributor to the poor air comes from âfugitive dustâ, which is basically the ultra-fine particles of soil from the earth. This was noted during the 2013-14 winter by the Environmental Protection Administrationâs (EPA) Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management. During the winter months, the rivers flow at a slower rate and are not as deep as at other times of the year. This exposes the river banks which dry out in the strong winds. The north-eastern winds with speeds of up to 3 metres a second cause gusts which pick up dust from the dried out river banks. The level of PM10 pollutant carried by these winds can reach figures of 2,532 ”g/mÂł as recorded by the Yunlin Countyâs Lunbei Township in 2015.
Levels of the microscopic particulate matter PM2.5 is mainly attributed to vehicle emissions, especially in the large metropolises. Fine particles are also produced by the thermal power plants which are located in the centre of the country, but their exhaust gases are carried by the wind to Taipei.
Research conducted by the National Taiwan University revealed that the average concentration of PM2.5 in Taipei and New Taipei City was 20 ”g/m3. It also noticed that the concentration was at its highest from ground-level up to around the height of a three-storey building. This concentration could be as much as ten to twenty times higher, than levels recorded at a greater height. Other hazardous suspended particles such as iron and sulphur also decreased in volume at higher levels. This goes to prove that most of these pollutants are caused by traffic.
The suggested limit for PM2.5 is 15 ”g/m³ which is 5 ”g/m³ higher than the figure suggested by the WHO. Based on historic data, the average annual levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have been more than 40 ”g/m³ for the past ten consecutive years.
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