[jhugg]

That's really interesting. Maybe the pm2.5 is less visible than the PM10, but maybe I'm just way way off.

As for the volume of air, I'm most curious where the 15% measurement was taken and how consistent it was. How far from the tower? How many different places were measured? How many days are in the sample? What's the P-Value?

But still, thanks. Makes this interesting to think about.

[OskarS]

I think PM10 rates are in similar orders of magnitude, in the "micrograms per cubic meter" range, so i don't think it would be that different. Maybe an order of magnitude larger, but not much more.

I agree, this is very surprising. Before I saw LeifCarrotson's calculation, I would have thought "tons" was the right unit as well. There's so much polluted air, you'd think that it would add up to some significant amount of matter, but apparently not.

[jhugg]

Well, 10km^2 is pretty tiny in a country the size of China, and I'm not sure how high up the pollution goes (higher than buildings but lower than planes).

So it's still a lot of pollution, just much less actual mass than I would have guessed.

[staplers]

Puts into perspective how much PM burning coal puts into the atmosphere..

EDIT: In 2016, the United States burned roughly 728 million tons of coal, enough to fill a typical railroad car every 4 seconds