@abcdabcd, I am sure the pollution from 14 million cars that hit chinese roads this past year has not helped. Kunming added a fair share of those new cars in china. All the tearing down of old high rises within the 2nd ring road has contributed a lot of dust and i can see the haze forming over the city after the winds decrease in the evening and the trucks are able to enter the city after 10:00pm. I am sure the drought has not helped the dust situation a whole lot.

Rather ironic with Chinese Congress meeting now that air quality in every large chinese city is horrible right now. Also interesting that smaller cities who often have better air quality such as Luxi, Quijing, Liuzhou, Beihai,etc. suddenly no data has been available for those cities for the last several days. Almost all the cities usually in the green are now no data available. Not sure if Kunming actually is concerned about there air quality. With air quality not so good last few days would have thought they would have stopped the large prison on north west side from spewing the cloud of toxic smelling black smoke which drifts into the city almost every morning around 8.

I beg to differ with anyone who says the higher pm2.5 readings and clarity of air do not match. I live on the top of the hills straight north of city center and have a scenic view of the entire city of kunming. Many days when the readings are high the city is covered in a thick haze. This morning i cannot see any of kunmings taller buildings through the soupy haze. I am now sleeping with the windows closed at night so i can breath better and my eyes do not hurt so bad in the morning. I lived in Wuhan 3 years ago and its air quality was considered horrible and some days i see little difference here.

Once the farm land is chemically contaminated it can take decades to purify itself and that is if not constantly recontaminated. Probably one of factors why chinese do not have a long life span. From what i have been reading those numbers are only going to get worse in the future. Recently i have observed in the little rural community i grew up in Minnesota, the air and water are exceptionally clean, people ate mostly beef and hogs raised locally and were fed clean feed. Most of us had gardens which we fertilized with manure from area farms. Many of the people i knew growing up have lived into their 80's or have recently died in there late 90's. Cancer is almost non-existant.

The flipped out travelers video is on Yahoo this morning. Going to make it more difficult to to sweep this under the rug. hehe Now i suppose soon will not be able to access yahoo without vpn.