Now what may become the world's first city with the word in its name is beginning to take shape in the unlikely setting of a smog-shrouded expanse of salty mud on the northern Chinese coast.
The health-based part of the smog rule sets limits on the amount of smog people breathe at any one time, while the other part of the rule, known as the secondary standard, sets limits over longer spans.
VBS travels to the single most polluted place on earth, the coal-mining town of Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, where kids play in dirty rivers and the sun sets early behind a thick curtain of smog.
Industrial pollution began accelerating, setting the stage for an era of smog and even flammable rivers.
The sun was setting over the city, a thin layer of smog hung in the sky and the colors, refracted through the fading light, were remarkable.
The setting sun was reduced to a yellowish coin by the thick blanket of smog.
Technically the administrator set a standard on ground-level ozone, which is the main ingredient of smog.
"We will condense a 1,000 cubic metres of smog down into a millimetre-cube carbon crystal – which we will set like a diamond on a ring".
And I suspected it was probably due to the amount of smog around back in those days, but it looked like the sky was set on fire.
At least two distinct types of smog are recognized: sulfurous smog and photochemical smog.
