According to recent research, living in Beijing could reduce life expectancy by up to 5 years. During the past 10 years, statistics show that the rate of lung cancer in Beijing has increased by 60%. Despite reports from the government stating that during the past 2 years, “77.3% of days were blue sky days”, according to EU reports, “only 17.7% of those days would be considered ‘medium’ or ‘low’ pollution.” The Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that they would now be assessing the performance of local governments regarding environmental protection through public opinion and since 2012, 30 monitoring stations for PM 2.5 have been introduced across China.

Read the full article on The Shanghaiist.