They came as a stark reminder of the seriousness of China’s pollution problem: grim reports of an 8-year-old girl with lung cancer, her disease attributed to the appalling state of the air she breathed.

It was perhaps the most bleak in a flurry of recent reports that began when a network of coal-fired power stations was switched on in Harbin, a major city in China’s northeast, as temperatures dropped in the city.

Smog days have led schools, roads and airports to close. Satellite pictures showed an additional layer of gray between the usual clouds and land, covering an area larger than the Korean Peninsula and stretching across major cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

Private heating of homes with coal adds to the filth in the air, and it is costing lives, according to research released in July. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said coal use in northern China had cut life expectancies by more than five years.

Embarrassingly for the Chinese government, the pollution may also cause security risks.

In the wake of an explosion in Tiananmen Square blamed on terrorism by China’s restless Uighur minority, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday that general surveillance efforts were being hampered by CCTV’s inability to penetrate the smog.

In Korea, there are worries about the pollution spreading. A recent spike of fine particulate matter in the air to unhealthy levels has been attributed to the Chinese smog.

China has been forced to take note. In September, it came up with a grand plan to curb the pollution by 2017, aiming to cut airborne particulate matter in the North China Plain by 25 percent and reduce coal’s share of the energy mix by 65 percent. But reports on Monday said a shortage of gas ― meant to substitute coal ― could scupper the plan.

Reuters reported that China’s anti-inflationary measure of artificially keeping gas prices low was a problem for gas imports. Some of the shortfall is to be made up by synthetic natural gas from coal, but an article in the Guardian argued that production of this would add to one of China’s other environmental headaches ― a shortage of water.

Besides such negative side effects, a solution may already be too late for the many Chinese who are already sick. Many more will fall ill before the smog clears.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)