Deadly spike in Beijing’s air pollution

This graph shows recent air quality monitoring data (PM 2.5) from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. As the New York Times noted, this spike—seen as a thick haze in the city—has been described as “postapocalyptic.”  Thanks in no small part to the Clean Air Act, we have thus far avoided the need to walk around U.S. cities wearing Darth Vader masks.  But perhaps we should send some masks to certain U.S. congresspersons who think the Clean Air Act should be repealed.

The original code for graphing the data from the embassy’s Twitter feed is from David Ruau.  I made a few minor adjustments.