I start my mornings with some Maxwell House and a visit to the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, which publishes a daily web-based summary of air quality in cities across China. Beijing is consistently among the worst. On their Air Pollution Index (API) scale of 0 to 500, with 500 being toxic and 300 being dangerous, Beijing usually flirts with highs each day above 100, or unhealthy. A sandstorm on March 18 and 19 took the API to a high of 360, and experiencing that was like being on Mars, or what I've always imaged Mars would be like, with the air brown and unbreathable.

I also torture myself by following the Twitter account @beijingair, which provides updates through the day of the pollutants in the air outside the U.S. embassy. The air-quality Tweets progress from "moderate" to "very unhealthy" as the day passes almost as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

In idle moments, I also like to visit the Asia Society's "Room with a View," a web feature the organization started during the Beijing Olympics. There, I can see a photo, taken from the same high-rise window each day, which chronicles with visual day-to-day evidence what my own eyes and my internet data already prove beyond any doubt: That the air in Beijing is really bad.

At first, I took some comfort thinking that what I was breathing was not really any worse than the air in New York on many days. Once again, some web research shattered that illusion. The New York City equivalent of the API is usually at about 50, or air quality of moderate concern.

The Chinese government knows air quality is a major problem and recently came up with a plan that it claims will continue to improve things by tackling the issue on a regional, rather than local, basis. The new plan reported this week in The China Daily builds on an existing government initiative, called "Blue Skies," which aims to increase the number of days in which Beijing's air is only "slightly polluted," with API readings below 100. The government goal was to have 256, or 70%, "blue sky days" by 2008. They surpassed this target by 18 days. In 1998, Beijing recorded only 100 “blue sky days," so things have been worse.

The cause of all this air pollution is China's policy of Fazhan, or rapid and dramatic industrialization, since the mid 1970s. As a proof point about how much has changed in that time, the government says that visibility in eastern regions of China, Beijing included. has dropped by 7 to 15 km compared to that in the early 1960s, as a result of air pollution.

Industrialization has been powered by cheap electricity, produced by coal-burning generation plants. Steel manufacturing and cement production, the core industries that are building China's cities, are among the dirtiest businesses on the planet. And let's not forget China's 76 million vehicles, which are trapped in never-ending stop-and-go traffic, which produces the lowest miles-per gallon and highest emissions-per-mile of any form of driving.

But now Fazhan has given way to a new policy of "scientific development," which basically means China would like to keep growing the economy without choking its residents to death.

I am optimistic that they can do this. I am hopeful, even, that things can improve soon and my obsession can be calmed. Because as bad as breathing the air in Beijing might be for my physical health, I'm starting to worry about my mental health, too, because even when things seem to be OK, there's evidence that they are not.

Consider: Today in Beijing the Chinese government says the API is 94, making this an official "blue sky day." But, just two minutes ago, this from @BeijingAir: "06-23-2010; 13:00; PM2.5; 42.0; 112; Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups."