China has issued a red alert for the first time ever as a blanket of smog has been settling over the capital Beijing.
As part of the alert, schools would be closed, factories temporarily shut down and half the city's cars would be ordered off roads within the city limits, officials said.
Cars with even and odd number license plates will alternate daily in using the city's roads, they explained.
The restrictions will be in effect until Dec. 10, when a cold weather front predicted by meteorologists is expected to push the smog out of the city.
Five days of steadily worsening pollution cut visibility within some parts of Beijing to 300 feet or less and delayed many flights into the city's main airport, prompting Beijing's Office of Emergency Management to issue the red alert.
An "orange alert," officially the second-highest alert level of the city's four-step system, had been called last week for the first time this year.
A red alert has never been called in Beijing before this.
Commuters in the city expressed concern over the driving restrictions and the effect it could have on the city's already overloaded mass transit system of buses and the subway.
Parents with children whose schools were closed also said they were concerned about the consequences.
"We were just informed the primary school will be shut for three days," said Li Xia, 35, who has an eight-year-old daughter. "There isn't such a thing as a pollution holiday for us. So I don't know how this will work — what are we going to do with our children while we're working?"
Still, the red alert suggests Chinese officials are taking pollution seriously after many years of denying any problems, environmentalists said.
"That's a sign of a different attitude from the Beijing government," said Dong Liansai, an energy and climate campaigner for Greenpeace who is based in Beijing. "It shows they really want to initiate this alert system and deal with air pollution."
Pollution is not just a problem for Beijing, environmental activist Ma Jun pointed out.
"We need to realize that pollution is a regional problem and it's not just about our own city [Beijing] and whatever emergency actions we can take," said Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Any measure addressing only Beijing "can only have limited results," he said.
