There was a good rain the other day. More is in the future, but we just haven’t seen a smog this thick or pervasive (4+ days)-ever. Rare to have even one day of “smog”. Don’t get me wrong, you can still make out distant local pollution like over a busy highway doing stop/go at rush hour.
Little over a decade ago, a local family had an exchange student come over from China. The family here noticed her getting off the plane and taking a picture of the sky, and asked here why she was taking the picture.
“Your sky is so blue! Ours is grey, we rarely see blue sky from all the pollution.” Sad but true.
I suggest you consider (at least part of) the source of the “plastics” odor as coming from the Clean Harbors Hazardous Waste Incinerator in Corunna, Ontario.
I wonder if China is cleaning any of that up. IIRC, when they had the Olympics, they banned cars in the area for a while beforehand in order to clean it up.
You’d think with all the solar cells made in China, they would be totally green and pollution free! </sarc>