THE capital’s meteorological bureau issued its first heavy fog alert of the winter Sunday, when low visibility forced the closure of six highways and caused the delay and cancellation of more than 200 flights.

    Although it was called a “fog alert,” the Institute of Public and Environment Affairs director, Ma Jun, said the haze smothering Beijing was “smog.”

    “Fog is the liquefaction of vapor in the air and should be transparent, while the dim haze we are suffering is smog, a combination of pollutants and fog,” Ma said.

    Lu Bin, a CITIC Trust employee who was at the airport waiting to board a flight to Kunming in Yunnan Province, said he bought face masks “to protect himself from the heavy pollution.”

    “The foggy days were not so frequent in the past and the sky was not as dim,” he said.

    According to the Air Pollution Index released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which monitors air quality in 120 key cities and municipalities, the capital topped the list of the worst polluted cities in China on Sunday.

    S. Ming Sung, chief Asia-Pacific representative at Clean Air Task Force, a United States-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing atmospheric pollution, said that firing up the city’s heating and the large number of vehicles on the roads contributed to the heavy smog.

    Many Beijing residents were concerned about the haze.

    Xu Ning, the mother of a 3-year-old boy in Beijing, said she canceled her son’s swimming class “because of the smog.”

    People with respiratory diseases, children and the elderly should stay indoors on days of smog, said Pan Xiaochuan, a professor at the School of Public Health at Beijing University.

    Not only was Beijing suffering, the National Meteorological Center of China issued a heavy fog alert Sunday for Tianjin Municipality, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, warning that some areas could experience reduced visibility to only 200 meters and advised people in fog-affected areas to cancel outdoor activities.

    Snow and rain would bring an end to the foggy weather in the coming week, the center said.

    (SD-Agencies)