Air pollution has reached unprecedented levels in Shanghai this winter, with the city receiving its second "yellow alert," the third-highest of four levels of severity, in just two weeks. After the city's Environmental Protection Bureau issued the alerts, the Shanghai Education Commission ordered all schools to cancel outdoor activities, though students were still required to attend classes.

Many local parents were upset about still having to take their children out in the eye-stinging smog - which surpassed 300 micrograms of particulate matter (PM) per cubic meter according to the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau - but their ire was renewed last week after a public primary school in Huangpu district rejected a request by some parents to install air purifiers in its classrooms.

Never before in the history of Shanghai has the issue of air pollution been escalated to such high-profile public discourse and media coverage. In previous winters, Shanghai residents ate their bitterness about having to breathe high levels of particulate matter blown in from coal-burning northern provinces. But with Beijing issuing two "red alerts" this month, the people refuse to take the matter lightly.

Further compounding the problem are recent reports that many children's hospitals in Shanghai are experiencing record-highs of overcapacity. The average daily number of emergency outpatients at Children's Hospital of Fudan University reached 9,000, 1,000 more than last year. The average wait time is currently four to six hours, with a majority of children reporting respiratory-related illnesses.

According to a nationwide survey carried out by Chen Yuzhi, a renowned respiratory expert and member of the Global Initiative for Asthma, the number of urban Chinese children aged under 15 suffering asthma in 2010 increased 50 percent from 2000, reaching 3 percent. That is to say, over 10 million children in China suffer asthma, which is caused primarily by pollution. Chen's study is conducted every five years, so we can predict the 2015 figures will increase.

Each year 350,000 to 500,000 people in China die from air pollution, according to an article in British medical journal The Lancet written by renowned Chinese medical experts and officials, including former Health Minister Chen Zhu. The nation's air quality has become so terrible that many government departments have installed air purifiers in their offices - all paid for with tax payers' money.

Public officials are apparently more important than children. Few if any public schools in China are equipped with air-purifying machines despite the fact that public schools are funded by tax payers. One wonders if these administrators are parents, as they seem reluctant to implement measures to protect students from our polluted environment.

This of course was not the first time. Back in October, a Chongming county hospital received 40 local students overcome with symptoms such as vomiting and respiratory tract disruptions. The county's disease control authorities found that the level of formaldehyde inside the students' newly renovated classrooms was three times higher than the national safety standard, a result of school administrators cheating environmental tests.

Unscrupulous public officials have become a cliche in our country, with those working in the education sector especially crooked. In November, 30 low-income students at an Anhui Province primary school were each forced to pay 200 yuan ($30.95) to the school's leadership after the students each received a 1,200 yuan charitable donation from an NGO. The dastardly leaders spent the ill-gotten 6,000 yuan on a banquet for themselves.

But you know our society has hit bottom when local officials won't even allow parents to purchase life-saving appliances for students. Even after the desperate parents in Huangpu district offered to purchase the purifiers themselves, the school's administrators turned them down a second time on the grounds that it "wouldn't be fair" for other students in classrooms without purifiers.

According to a report by China Radio International, the vice principal of a Beijing school who also turned down an offer by parents to purchase air purifiers said that "without a standard guidance from local authorities, the brand-choice of the purifier...can be an issue."

In other words, bureaucracy as usual is once coming at the expense of our children's health. It' s no wonder, then, that in recent years China has witnessed a mass exodus of students being sent by their parents to study abroad. These desperate parents are willing to spend, or go into debt, millions of yuan just to ensure that their children can grow up in a clean environment - or at least attend a school that makes the health of its students a priority.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.