New Air Pollution Monitoring System for China

The Chinese government has ramped up its fight against poluution with an updated monitoring system that can check the environment of cities across the country.

The new system introduced by the Ministry of Environmental Protection will provide updates on 113 Chinese cities. The data will then be posted on the internet every 60 minutes from over 2,000 monitoring stations.

Experts believe more accurate data can help cities introduce better policies to deal with air pollution.
CRI's Dominic Swire has more.

Traffic in big cities has been identified as a major source of pollution. Here in Beijing is no exception. But new advances in the technology used to monitor air quality in China means that experts are one step closer to tackling the problem.

The new system introduced by the Ministry of Environmental Protection provides updates of 113 Chinese cities. The data is posted on the internet every 60 minutes from over 2,000 monitoring stations across the country.

Professor Zhu Tong is an expert in air pollution at Peking University.

"I think it's very important to provide more precise information for dealing with air pollution."

He says more frequent information is valuable because otherwise high concentrations of pollutants that last for a short time can go unnoticed.

" also this hourly variation of the concentration can help us understand how the air pollution is formed, whether it's formed locally or transported from other areas."

Despite excessive levels of pollution in Shanghai last month, China's attempt to clean its skies has been seeing results. Guangdong, for example, had an average air pollution index of 65 last October, which is considered 'high' with potential health risks. The same period this year saw that figure drop to 55, just above the 'medium' mark, which is not expected to impact health. In 2005 this figure was 79.　

Shan Huang is an air quality researcher at the Clean Air Initiative.

"For example, if the concentration is very high during the rush hours, people can take spec action not to go out for this specific time zone. Or some people can give advice if you have this kind of health problem what your action should be."

Although this new technology doesn't provide a solution to clean China's air, hopefully the new data will help speed up research to make us all breath easier.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire.