Pollution masks given to outdoor workers(2)

The company gives sanitation workers two masks a month and has emphasized the importance of wearing them when the sky is gray, he said.

"Some of my colleagues don't wear the mask because it's not easy to breath through them, but I know how much pollution will get in my lungs without it," Wang said.

"Some street cleaners, traffic wardens and security guards are not regularly given masks by their employers and are unprotected in the haze," he said. "I'm lucky compared with them."

The Future Green Youth Leadership Council, an environmental protection NGO in Tianjin, said it will start distributing masks to outdoor workers on Monday.

Zhao Liang, the group's founder, said he was not sure how many people working outside they will help with masks but the NGO will do everything possible to reduce vulnerable people's exposure to pollution.

Feng Yongfeng said Green Beagle is considering extending its assistance to the homeless, giving masks to the sick and elderly among them, who are particularly vulnerable to air pollution.

Feng Yuanjian, former director of the homeless shelter in Beijing's Dongcheng district, said government teams step up efforts to collect the homeless on very cold or polluted days.

The shelter will increase the regularity of patrol cars and conduct extra patrols of bridges to either move the homeless to the shelter or give them the equipment they need to survive in extreme weather.

But the shelter distributes mostly clothes and quilts to the homeless, not masks.

"The homeless are not used to wearing a mask," Feng said. "It's necessary to make them realize that a mask is as important as a quilt when the city is shrouded in intense air pollution."

A spokesperson for the capital's civil affairs bureau could not be reached on Sunday.

Businesses are making efforts to minimize the impact of air pollution in the city, giving employees masks and equipping their offices with air purifiers.

Zhang Hua, business development director of Abeinsa, a Spanish engineering company in Beijing, has just ordered an air purifier for the office and masks for employees in the city.

"I wrote a letter to headquarters to ask for an air purifier in our Beijing office after I saw the high index of air pollution on Friday, and the headquarters agreed," he said.

The masks and air purifiers will minimize the hazard, he said.