For anyone getting ready to fire up their grill for the summer, don't light that match just yet.

Citing Beijing's air pollution as the reason, Beijing municipal officials are preparing another crackdown on outdoor and roadside food sellers. Vendors have come under fire in the past as being "unsanitary" and even "uncivilized," but this is the first time that the grillers have been cited as polluters, according to China Daily. Flagrant cooking of meat and other outdoor delights could result in monetary penalties as high as RMB 5,000, and of course, confiscation of barbecuing equipment, China Daily said.

We all know that Beijing's noxious air is filled with nasty carcinogens that are bad for you, but Greenpeace has revealed just how bad the air we breathe has become.

The international environmental advocacy group recruited 16 volunteers to wear a "personal pollution sampler" for a few days each this past January and February (during the "Airpocalypse") and found an alarming cocktail of toxic particles:

The first thing we realized when we started the research was that the sampler actually enables you to see the pollution. The filters reveal the amount of toxic particles that enter your lungs during a single day in Beijing.

Then we got the results from the lab. Arsenic, mercury, lead, selenium... a neurotoxic and cancer-causing cocktail. The results are not pretty, and reveal clues to the reasons behind China’s lung cancer epidemic. The WHO recently released the results of a massive research project into what is making us sick, pointing out air pollution as the biggest environmental health risk in the world. The research estimated that 20% of lung cancer cases in China are caused by outdoor air pollution.

If Beijing's blue skies lulled you into a false sense of serenity, wake up. Like a back-handed bitch-slap, the smog is back and here to stay (for now). According to the China Daily:

 The density of PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers that can harm the heart and lungs, reached 400 micrograms per cubic meter early on Monday, well above national and international standards, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said. The center said due to rising temperatures, lack of wind and other unfavorable conditions, the pollution is unlikely to disperse in the next few days.

 

We've seen (and breathed) far worse than today's bad air, but it's never a good feeling to go from this:

This month has been a sunny one for Greenpeace China. They have successfully installed Beijing's largest rooftop solar PV project, one that, at full capacity, can generate enough electricity to satisfy more than two urban Chinese families per day.

Green is good. That's why Greening the Beige is collecting eco-creative submissions from Chinese artists for its Fund for the Green Arts. There's just two days left to submit your work and win cool prizes, including exclusive T-shirts from the NLGX Design Store and a bundle of cash.