Beijing Pollution Threatens Success of Summer Games – Business of the Beijing Olympics – CNBC.com

Beijing Pollution Threatens Success of Summer Games – Business of the Beijing Olympics – CNBC.com: “Visitors to this summer’s Beijing Olympics will get an immediate lesson in the environmental cost of China’s break-neck economic development: the worst air pollution in the world, which kills an estimated 656,000 people every year.

” ‘There’s simply no experience quite like it,’ recalled Don Wyatt, a China expert from Middlebury College, about deplaning at Beijing International Airport. ‘One’s throat instantly constricts. One’s eyes instantly water. Things improve very little once one exits the airport. The rest of it is all about adaptation, learning to cope.’ “