Raising Kids In World's Most Polluted City; Inhaling In Ulanbaatar "Like Drawing Fire Into My Lungs"

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argalmaa Sukhbaatar is five years old, and she hasn’t been to school in weeks. Her parents are keeping her at home to protect her from the toxic air outside. The oldest of three children, Jargalmaa is a resident of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the world’s coldest capital city and one of its most polluted. During the winter months, when average temperatures can dip below -40 degrees (in both Fahrenheit and Celsius), the air in Ulaanbaatar fills with toxic particles that emanate from the unrefined coal burning inside people’s homes, causing a smog so thick that it becomes almost impossible to see.

Forty-five percent of Mongolians now live in the city, and experts say it is overpopulated. As Ulaanbaatar continues to grow and industrialize, the problem has only worsened. The pollution is especially bad in northern districts of the city, where families settle in traditional nomadic yurts, known as gers, and burn whatever they can find to stay warm in below freezing temperatures.

Jargalmaa lives in a ger district with her parents, Altantuya and Darambazar, and her younger brothers, 3-year-old Tugsjargal and 6-month-old Tugsgarid. On a freezing January morning, Altantuya, a cheerful woman with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, explains that her youngest son never goes outside. He was recently diagnosed with rickets, a skeletal disorder tied to vitamin D deficiency. Her children have already gotten sick three times since autumn—all cases of respiratory infections like the flu or bronchitis—and she plans on keeping the two eldest children out of kindergarten until the cold, and the associated pollution, lessen. She’s not alone. The government of Mongolia recently extended schools’ winter holidays to encourage parents to keep their kids inside, and many families have sent their children out of the city to live with relatives in the countryside.

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It’s 9am on a recent Wednesday outside of Kindergarten n° 212 in the Dari Ekh area of Ulaanbaatar, and breathing in air feels like drawing fire into my lungs. I am wearing a certified N99 face mask, which is meant to filter out fine air pollution particles, but it’s itchy and gives me the uncomfortable feeling of having a sheen of mist stuck to the front of my face. I watch dozens of little kids walk into the kindergarten with their parents, either wearing no masks or wearing masks that don’t fit—rendering them essentially useless. The morning air outside is so filled with smog from this ger district’s chimneys that it’s difficult to see, and I find myself fervently hoping that conditions are better inside the school. A portable monitor measures the concentration of fine particles, known as PM 2.5. The monitor says that the PM 2.5 concentration inside the entrance of the kindergarten is 345 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3)—a level deemed “hazardous” by international guidelines, at which everyone is at risk for serious respiratory issues. According to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, PM 2.5 values shouldn’t go above an annual mean of 10 μg/m3 or a 24-hour mean of 25 μg/m3.

EDIT

https://qz.com/1557026/mongolias-air-pollution-crisis-is-the-future-of-our-cities/

[bobbieinok]

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