My head is full of mucus as I write this, and I suspect part of it is due to the thick air pollution that has in recent weeks been strangling Shanghai. From what I've read in the local news lately about the staggering increase in respiratory related cases reported by city hospitals, I'm not alone. It seems that the entire city is sick.

The rest of China, especially the north, has been just as bad. Beijing, for instance, has been covered in charcoal-factory fog since they turned on their central heating system last month, resulting in off-the-charts particulate matter (PM) levels.

Shanghai, which has no central heating, is proudly anti-coal, and the municipality also boasts stricter industrial regulations than North China. Even so, apart from the occasional clear day, November and December in Shanghai have been hazy at best and, at worse, apocalyptic.

"I'm getting out of here, I do not want my daughter breathing this stuff!" said a friend of mine from Spain. A long-term expat who is raising his family in Shanghai, they have endured numerous social and cultural obstacles, but pollution is the one thing here they have not been able to overcome. "I need to start looking elsewhere for a job. But the political and economic situation in Europe is a mess, so we can't go home just yet."

Another acquaintance, a foreign restaurant owner in Pudong New Area, also hinted that he would be following the expat exodus that has been occurring this past year due to Shanghai's degrading environment. "This is not a new situation, actually. I must say I have only one year left here and then I am selling. Maybe buy some land in America or the Mediterranean and live there for awhile."

"Why I'm Leaving China" public break-up letters have over the past several years become en vogue among disenchanted expats who can no longer tolerate certain elements of life here. But while the more high-profile articles were written by jaded journalists who had grown exasperated by Beijing, the lesser-reported yet larger diaspora seems to be out of Shanghai.

Shanghai is currently home to China's largest foreign population of nearly 250,000, but at the pace that foreigners have been fleeing, that status may be fleeting. And let there be no mistake - the ones who are forsaking their lives, homes and careers here are not new arrivals or short-term "expense-account expats," but long-term "old China hands" who had once expected to grow old here.

I count myself among them. China has been my home for over a decade, with a dozen mainland cities and provinces under my belt. But as a newcomer to Shanghai, which is a veritable kidney for all of the toxic particulates being blown down from North China, I am, for the very first time, reconsidering my life here.

My new wife, who is from western China, and I were planning on having children in Shanghai, but now that does not seem wise. Just the other day the Children's Hospital of Shanghai reported to local media a staggering increase in infants and children coming in with respiratory diseases due to the city's air pollution.

I really hate to leave, but considering how many Shanghainese teenagers are being sent overseas by families who are willing to double down on expensive private schools just for cleaner air, I may have to follow their lead.

As a history teacher, I recall the lessons of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley and of the Anasazi Indians in the American Southwest, starkly different cultures at completely different periods of ancient history, both who reached the same conclusion: destroy your environment and you are dead. I fear China, for all its efforts to regulate industrial waste, toxic emissions and coal consumption, will meet a similar fate.

As such, I am ready to set in motion what I have coined my "China-Plus-One Plan." That means keeping one foot in China and one foot somewhere else nearby with livable air. I'm finding, unfortunately, that between the palm-tree fires which blanket Southeast Asia in smoke in the summer, and the carcinogenic coal fumes from northern Asia all winter, my options here are limited.

I'd probably do well to follow the new migratory path of middle-class Chinese, who have been absconding to Australia in record numbers since Australia's emergence as China's biggest trading partner. As reported in The Economist, in 2012 more than 25,000 Chinese obtained permanent residence in Australia. Approximately 3 to 4 percent of Sydney's present 4.6 million populous were born in China.

And what do each of them have in common? The human need to breathe.

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