New year brings new air quality challenges for China

According to the South China Morning Post, only five of 120 cities in China logged “blue-sky days” on New Year’s Day as the first up-to-the-hour air quality readings were reported under tougher pollution standards.
Data posted on the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s website showed that most cities saw “moderate” levels of sulfur dioxide and PM10, or large particulate matter, with 29 cities showing slight pollution.
In Beijing, most of its 35 monitoring stations showed “moderate” air pollution. The outskirts of Beijing seemed to fare the worst. The remote Liulihe monitoring station in the southwestern suburbs of Fangshan district recorded the worst air quality index (AQI) in the city, 210. Several cities that are near the capital, such as Baoding, Shijiangzhuang and Tianjin, saw the worst pollution in the country.
The environmental ministry warned last year that at least two out of three of cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou would fail to meet the revised air quality standards in China, although these lag behind World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.
The new standards, announced in March 2012, apply to ozone, carbon monoxide and PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter) along with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and large particulate matter (PM10).
Daily pollution reading is required to be published hourly and daily on government websites. There are 496 monitoring sites in 74 cities in China.
“It’s remarkable that the number of cities offering public access to real-time PM2.5 data has gone from zero to 74 in just over a year,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.
 
Heeding the continuing public concerns over the quality of the monitoring data, authorities have focused on ensuring minimum interference from local governments
during the release of pollution readings, said Wan Bentai, chief engineer at the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Over all, it is believed that most cities will fall below the new air quality standards. (January 3, 2013)