With Beijing's air pollution casting a dark gray shroud over our city sky this summer, its hard not to wonder what all that particulate matter, ozone, and other contaminates are doing to your body. We asked Dr. William Chickering, one of four American Board-certified Emergency Physicians at BJU, a few questions about it. Dr. Chickering has lived in Beijing almost four years after time on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia. He has practiced for prolonged periods in Guatemala, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, and Korea.

Depressing news for Beijingers in today’s Wall Street Journal: the air quality in China is officially getting worse again. After steadily improving for the last few years, the WSJ article says China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection acknowledged last month that China’s air pollution levels rose in the first quarter of 2010 for the first time since 2007. Yesterday came worse news: “The first half of 2010 had the worst air quality since 2005.”

Recycling is a vexed issue in China. On the one hand it’s a obviously good thing that much of the country’s waste is recycled, though Beijing still seems headed for a waste crisis in the near future as landfills rapidly reach capacity – more on that in a moment. The problem with China’s recycling industry is its highly fragmented and unregulated nature, which creates unsafe conditions for recyclers and dangers for consumers. The past week has seen disturbing reports of unsafe plastics making their way into takeaway food containers, and the sleeves wrapped around disposable chopsticks.

Dr Richard has done an interesting post on the differences between practicing medicine in the US and China, which run the gamut from divergent common ailments to wildly varying patient expectations. One worrying phenomenon the good doctor notes is the expectation among local patients that antibiotics will be doled out for any illness.

Beijing isn't all "blue sky days." Sometimes it's pretty, erm, foggy here. That's when you need to cold rock a mask. Just don't mention swine flu.