New Report Shows 239 Days of Good Air in Beijing

The latest report released by the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau shows the city recorded 239 days of good air quality in the first 10 months of this year, seven days more than 2008. The bureau attributed recent bad air quality to three dense fogs in October.

According to the monthly air quality report from October released on the bureau's official website, 78.6 percent of days from January to October this year met grade-2 standards or more. The number of days that met grade-one standards by the end of October exceeded the total number of last year and saw an increase of 12 days over 2008, "witnessing an obvious improvement," the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Although statistics show a positive trend in Beijing's weather, recent fog and haze led to doubt of the official figures.

The October fog affected not only Beijing, but also all of North China. Similar conditions have happened since 2008, the bureau was quoted by the Beijing Morning Post as saying.

The monthly report explained dense fog is likely to happen in October when tropical air collides with cooler air over Beijing causing a calm wind, which makes it hard for atmospheric pollutants to dissipate.

As People's Daily reported, doubts from the public were triggered by different air condition reports released by the independent monitoring station at the US embassy at the end of October. When the station warned the pollution of Beijing's air reached the "dangerous" level, the Beijing municipal bureau marked the air quality as "grade-3 light pollution."

The municipal environmental authority said its monitoring stations use an automatic supervising system and the statistics are consistent with that of the China National Environmental Monitoring Center.

"I think most Beijing citizens can feel the air condition is worse than 2008," Feng Yongfeng, a Beijing-based environmentalist and founder of the Green Beagle, a nonprofit environmental watchdog, told the Global Times Monday. "Since the biggest pollution source, vehicles, is on a rise, air conditions can't be improved."

Source: Global Times