Bloomberg, April 7, 2014:
As a thick smog hung over Beijing last year, Stephanie Giambruno and her husband decided it was time for her and their two girls to return to the U.S.
Giambruno's husband stayed back in China for his job as general manager of a global technology company. He now skypes with the family twice a day and lives with "constant jet lag" as he travels to Florida once a month to see them, she says.
While it's hard to be apart, Giambruno says Beijing's record air pollution left them no choice. She saw friends' children develop asthma. Their own daughters, at age 6 and 21 months, were often forced to remain indoors.
"It's not a way to live, to keep your baby inside with an air filter running," she said.
As bad air chokes Chinese cities, some expatriates are starting to leave families in their home countries, the latest sign of pollution's rising cost to themore than half-a-million foreigners working in China and the multinationals seeking to retain them. Smog in Beijing was worse than government standards most days last year, and environment ministry statistics show that 71 of 74 Chinese cities failed to meet air-quality standards.The World Health Organization said in March that air pollution contributed to 7 million deaths worldwide in 2012 — with 40 percent of those coming from the region dominated by China under the WHO's classification system. Outdoor air pollution can cause lung cancer, a WHO agency said last year, ranking it as a carcinogen for the first time.
Hardship Packages
"We are seeing some companies reverting to 1980s and 1990s hardship packages for executive-level candidates in cities that are hard hit with pollution," said Angie Eagan, managing director for China at recruitment firm MRIC, in an e-mail. "These packages are shaped around executives leaving their families in their home country and receiving an allowance for frequent home trips."