Lab equipment manufacturers to benefit from China’s revamp of air pollution standards

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world’s largest maker of scientific instruments in terms of revenue, will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent revamp of air pollution regulations in China. China’s decision to monitor levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) which are ultra fine particles, is creating new growth areas for makers of laboratory equipment. “Thermo has long been a major supplier of PM2.5 monitoring equipment in developed markets. We expect strong demand for our equipment from China as the air-monitoring stations add new equipment to monitor the levels of PM2.5,” said Zhou Xiaobin, Thermo’s commercial director of the environmental and processing instrument division in China. There are more than 2,000 air monitoring stations in China according to Zhou, and each of those stations will add at least one PM2.5 monitor by 2016 when the revised standards for air quality will take effect all over the country. Each monitor costs 300,000 yuan (US$47,000). According to the Xinhua News Agency, more than half of the weight of industrial dust in northern China is composed of ultra fine particles. PM2.5 will be among the air-quality indicators in the forthcoming revision of China’s national standards. A high level of PM2.5 is one of the primary causes of atmospheric haze and has been linked to heart attacks and lung disease. Although Beijing’s municipal environmental protection bureau has categorized the air in Beijing as mildly polluted, independent measurements have rated the air quality in the capital as heavily polluted. (December 6, 2011)