The great smoke-out

Ground-level and high-elevation measurements of pollutants, including aerosolized soot, should be taken all summer throughout Asia, particularly downwind from Beijing. Ozone, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide should be measured daily, perhaps even hourly, in the U.S. and other locations deeply affected by Chinese pollution, such as Hong Kong, the Maldives, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

Public health experts should set up emergency-room monitoring inside Beijing and regionally throughout the summer, watching for any declines in admissions for respiratory ailments. Anthropologists and sociologists should set up cohorts of Beijing residents, representing a broad social spectrum, analyzing their reactions to the shutdown. The data should be archived and made public so researchers around the world can draw every possible inference. The Google Foundation, Sir Richard Branson and other donors who have made climate change a priority should step up to the plate, helping provide the millions of dollars it will require to document this event.

It is probable that the Beijing shutdown will prove even more dramatic than the 1984 anti-smog effort in L.A. Certainly the air pollution in Beijing is far worse than it was in Los Angeles. But the effect of the shutdown on the political and economic policies of world leaders cannot be measured without data.

If, as many scientists believe will be the case, the shutdown markedly reduces air pollution levels across Asia and the Pacific, demonstrably reduces aerosol emissions that imperil the survival of the Himalayan glaciers (and are breathed by billions of people across the globe) and decreases hospital admissions for acute asthma in China and its neighbors, it may also prove a turning point in world history.

This opportunity will go undocumented, however, unless the world community mobilizes its scientific and funding resources immediately.