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A Chinese man is suing the government for failing to halt air pollution, after he had to buy a treadmill to exercise indoors. Li Guixin, from Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, claims the authorities have failed to control the increasing smog, which has forced him to spend money on face masks and an air purifier as well as the treadmill. His lawsuit was filed as readings of PM2.5, a key measure of pollution, reached 444 micrograms per cubic meter in the capital of Beijing, nearly 18 times the safe level.  The smog in Beijing is now so thick that it is blocking sunlight, despite recent announced closures or production cuts at 147 of the city's industrial plants. Mr Li submitted his complaint to a district court, asking the Shijiazhuang Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau to ‘perform its duty to control air pollution according to the law’, the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily said. He is also seeking compensation for local residents for the choking pollution that has engulfed Shijiazhuang, and much of northern China, this winter. ‘The reason that I'm proposing administrative compensation is to let every citizen see that amid this haze, we're the real victims,’ Li was quoted as saying by the newspaper. It is unclear whether the court will accept Li's lawsuit.  Li said he had spent money on face masks, an air purifier and a treadmill to get indoor exercise last December when the pollution was particularly severe. ‘Besides the threat to our health, we've also suffered economic losses, and these losses should be borne by the government and the environmental departments because the government is the recipient of corporate taxes, it is a beneficiary,’ he said. Northern China has in recent days been suffering its worst air pollution crisis in months. Authorities have introduced countless orders and policies and made innumerable vows to clean up the environment but the problem only seems to get worse. The government has invested in projects and empowered courts to mete out stiff penalties but enforcement has been patchy at the local level, where authorities often depend on the taxes paid by the polluting industries.  The National Meteorological Center has raised its smog alert for northern and central China, with heavy smog expected for another two days, state news agency Xinhua said. Beijing has been shrouded in stinking smog for more than a week and in an effort to cut pollution, 147 industrial companies in Beijing had cut or suspended production as of Tuesday, the Xinhua state news agency said. ‘Of course, on days where pollution levels reach or even exceed the scale we are very concerned and we have to see this as a crisis,’ Bernhard Schwartlander, the World Health Organization's (WHO) representative in China said. ‘There's now clear evidence that, in the long term, high levels of air pollution can actually also cause lung cancer,’ he said. Hebei, a major industrial region which surrounds Beijing, is home to some of the most polluted cities in China. Shijiazhuang routinely recorded ‘beyond index’ measurements of particulate matter in early 2013. The China Academy of Sciences identified the province as a major source of noxious smog that hung over Beijing a year ago. The government said in an action plan for Hebei in September that it would ban new projects in certain industries, close outdated steel and cement facilities and slash coal use. The province has promised to cut total steel capacity by 86 million tonnes, about 40 percent of last year's production, by 2020. Official data suggests that is starting to happen. DailyMail
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