China Labour Bulletin is quoted in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
27 February 2012
Shanghai traffic police have been issued with nasal filters to help them withstand the city's choking smog.
The city's Songjiang district traffic police department said it had given the U-shaped nose plugs to 240 officers for an initial trial.
The scheme may be extended to rest of the city's traffic police if successful, according to state media reports.
The department decided to provide nasal filters – which it called "invisible masks" – because unlike traditional masks they would not hinder officers from shouting and blowing whistles.
A sequence of heavily polluted days in January, dubbed the "airpocalypse", has transformed public attitudes towards the thick smog bedevilling many of China's major cities.
Geoff Crothall, communications director for the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, said: "It's obviously encouraging that Shanghai is realising the need to protect its police officers."
He said many Chinese labourers such as miners and construction workers faced even worse conditions without adequate protection. "I just wish other employers would take the health and safety of their employees equally seriously," he said.
An assistant traffic officer surnamed Chen told the state-run Global Times that she stood for more than six hours a day amid pollution and car exhaust fumes for a salary of 2,000 yuan (about £210) a month, plus 100 yuan "to compensate her for any damage to her health while working outside".
Crothall said: "Legally, [traffic police] should be covered by insurance provisions. You won't get in a hospital door with 100 yuan these days."
Nasal air filters are widely advertised online in China and western countries as an unobtrusive alternative to air-filtration masks. The news reports did not specify which brand of nasal filters the Shanghai traffic police were using or how effective they were at blocking common forms of pollution.
The industrial city of Jinan, in coastal Shandong province, announced last month it had become China's first city to allow its traffic police to wear masks on heavily polluted days.
Shanghai's air pollution levels, while not as high as those in Beijing, have risen in recent months. The city's air quality index reading rose above 100, the World Health Organisation's red line for public health, on 23 days this year, according to state media.