SOUTH east finally wiped clean by the wrath of God turns out to be one of the less alarmist headlines I’ve come across this week on the high levels of air pollution. And not just because it came from The Daily Mash, which does a fine job of parodying popular print journalism.

The Express, predictably, came up with “Return of the Killer Smog”, which ran like a B-movie horror flick to frighten the pants off pensioners. For me, the most worrying announcement was on Twitter: ‘Scary #smog. #Yorkshire VERY HIGH 10/10 particle #air pollution exceeding many Chinese cities.’ I hit ‘retweet’ and fretted.

The screen shot that came with this was from a Chinese website that has a real-time air quality index for cities and was reporting ‘unhealthy’ levels for York. It is not clear how they gather this information outside of China; when I checked the site subsequently it had a distractingly large advert for lingerie alongside the Fishergate AQI and the levels compared to those recorded on Defra’s air pollution site were higher.

Defra’s UK-Air site is excellent and it was reassuring to see that Yorkshire and Humberside’s air pollution levels were, at the time of writing (Wednesday pm), low to moderate. Compare that with the ‘hazardous’ air pollution levels for some Chinese cities – according to the other site, Jinan had an AQI of 389 at that point, meaning serious health effects for everyone – and we’re not in the same ballpark. Not yet, anyway. China’s air pollution is so bad it’s being compared to a nuclear winter. The smog is slowing photosynthesis in plants, potentially causing havoc to the food supply, and has impacted on the economy, grounding flights, closing highways and putting off tourists.

Bags of fresh mountain air were brought in to one polluted province as a ‘treat’ for residents. If the promotional photos of kids gulping a few metered lungfuls of it weren’t enough to make you stop and think, China’s death tolls from the lethal levels of air pollution – estimated to be up to 500,000 a year – are definitely scary.

While coal-fired plants are one of the main causes of China’s ‘airpocalypse’ (ironically, the country that was building a power station a week has now banned the building of any new coal-fired plants in several key industrial regions), it is dust-laden wind from the Sahara, combined with pollution from the Continent and our own dirty cities that has caused the crisis here.

The unusually high levels in England are expected to have blown over by this weekend, but it ought to be a wake-up call. Just because we can still see the sun and we’re not wearing masks doesn’t mean the danger isn’t there. Particulate matter – the tiny bits that you breathe in – is an invisible killer, getting into the lungs and the bloodstream, causing heart attacks and strokes as well as cancers and respiratory problems.

And who produces that? We do. Sitting in cars, doing the school run or the shopping, we’re adding to the cocktail that could be silently killing our friends or neighbours, our elderly parents, our partners.

Our children, who we may seek to protect by driving them around, will be breathing in the same noxious mix when they get out at the school gates (which have higher levels, for obvious reasons).

The UK is being taken to court by the European Commission for regularly exceeding air pollution levels in 16 zones, including Yorkshire and Humberside, despite an extension of the original 2010 deadline. It’s not only the UK that is failing to reduce air pollution; other European countries are as bad, or worse.

But they are starting to do something about it. In Paris last month, ministers made public transport free and banned cars with odd-numbered licence plates from entering the city on one day and even numbers the next. Milan bans cars on Sunday when pollution levels are over a specified level for 12 consecutive days.

In York, we’ve trialled closing a bridge to private vehicles during the day. Oh, the fuss and palaver that’s caused – and how triumphant the opposition and the pro-car lobby are that City of York Council has been censored for fining transgressors.

However the Lendal Bridge saga turns out, we have to find a solution that stops choking this city and its people. That means reducing our car use. Deal with it.