quote:

---

No blue skies but no need to worry: Beijing
China struggles to fight off polluted image ahead of Games
By Tracy Quek, China Correspondent

BEIJING - ATHLETES and visitors in Beijing for the Olympics next month should not judge the city's air quality by the colour of its sky, a top city environment official said yesterday.

Just because you do not see a bright blue sky overhead, do not jump to the conclusion that the air that day is severely polluted, said Mr Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.

He made the comment when asked how Beijing intends to manage public perception that often equates its grey, smoggy skies with dirty air, and also whether environment officials could guarantee bright, blue skies during the Aug 8-24 Games.

Less than a month before the Games begin, air pollution remains a big issue for Beijing, which has been struggling to cast off its image as a smog-shrouded city.

Athletes have raised health concerns over how Beijing's bad air might affect their performance, with some deciding to delay their arrival until just before the Olympic opening ceremony on Aug 8.

The view that a clear blue sky denotes a clean-air day has been reinforced in recent years by Beijing's much-publicised efforts to increase the number of 'blue-sky days' it sees in a year.

State media has explained the term to mean days of acceptable air quality according to China's own - and not international - clean air standards.

Officials have not clearly explained to what extent domestic standards vary from those applied in European countries, or those set by the World Health Organisation.

Beijing officials regularly use, however, the higher annual number of 'blue sky days' - the count went from 100 in 1998, to 246 last year - as evidence of a vast improvement in the city's air quality.

But Mr Du yesterday sought to clear up some misconceptions about the 'blue-sky' target.

'When we speak of the so-called blue-sky days, in the environmental protection sense, we are referring to a day when the major pollutants in the air are within acceptable ranges according to our national air quality standard,' he said.

'It is the public and the press that often take blue-sky days to mean the actual colour of the sky,' he told reporters visiting the city's environmental protection monitoring centre, which keeps tabs on air, water, noise and land pollution levels.

'We have never, in the environmental protection sense, played up the blue-sky quota. It is a popular way of talking about things, and we have accommodated it,' Mr Du said.

Despite his apparent disclaimer, however, he said that 'athletes will have nothing to worry about' during the Games.

After nine years of strenuous clean-up efforts costing about 120 billion yuan (S$24 billion), Beijing now meets healthy air standards for 70per cent of the days in a year, against just 20per cent a decade ago, said Mr Du.

Of the four major air pollutants monitored, three, including carbon monoxide, have been brought down to acceptable levels. Only one - particulate matter in the air, from construction sites and vehicle exhaust fumes - remains a problem.

But special measures starting tomorrow will ensure that particulate matter will not be an issue next month, he said.

Beijing will impose traffic restrictions which will take at least a third of its 3.3million cars off the roads, and will halt all construction work during the Games.

'We have done all this to ensure that the 30per cent of days when air quality does not quite meet the mark will not occur during the Olympics,' said Mr Du.

---

quote:

---

Two pictures, each taken this year from a block of flats in the centre of Beijing.

The one on the left is what Beijing hopes you'll see when the Olympics begin in a month's time. The one on the right is what you'll see if its pollution control plans fail.

When it bid for the Games in 2001, Beijing promised the International Olympic Commission that its air would be normal: "Air and water quality is expected to be within World Health Organization standards at all venues, and in Beijing generally." (Report of the IOC Evaluation Commission for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.)

Compare that promise with the warning issued by IOC president Jacques Rogge in August 2007: if the air is still bad during the Olympics, some endurance events might have to be postponed or delayed.

So, Beijing's air will be fundamental to the success or failure of this city's Games.

How serious is the problem? We've carried out our own investigation into Beijing's air quality. Let's break it down.

The location: we tested every day for seven days at a fixed point along Yonghegong avenue in the centre of Beijing. This is part of the route of the individual road race in the men's cycling - an important endurance event. We used a hand-held machine that has a 20% or so margin of error.

The pollutant: We tested for airborne particles known as PM10 - a source of much of this city's pollution. These particles come from traffic, factories, building sites, and occasional dust storms.

The standard: the World Health Organization's air quality guideline for PM10 is a maximum of 50 micrograms/cubic metre (averaged over a 24-hour mean). For more polluted cities, the WHO has set several interim targets, the most generous of which is a maximum of 150 micrograms/cubic metre.

The readings:

01/07/08 : 121 micrograms/cubic metre
02/07/08 : 172
03/07/08 : 122
04/07/08 : 351
05/07/08 : 112
06/07/08 : 27
07/07/08 : 242

The conclusion: One day lived up to the WHO's air quality guidelines.
Three days lived up to the WHO's more generous interim targets.
Three days were so polluted that they were outside even the WHO's most generous targets. The most polluted day - 4 July - was seven times worse than the WHO's air quality guidelines.

Comparison with London: It's worth comparing these readings with London - the city that hosts the Games after Beijing. PM10 readings taken during the last week by the London Air Quality Network in sites in East London (the site of the 2012 Games) were all within the WHO's air quality guidelines.

Our quick investigation shows that, with just one month to go, Beijing faces a real test if it's to live up to its Olympic promise of clean air.

The city's officials realise this. So they've decided to impose a series of emergency air quality measures. On 20 July half of Beijing's cars will come off the streets, building sites will stop work, and a number of factories will shut down. Even outdoor spray painting will be banned.

This gives 19 days for the dust and the airborne particles to settle before the first event is held.

If these measures don't work, the city says that it's prepared to take what it calls "more stringent measures" during the Olympics. But it doesn't say what these include.

"If I have to give it a simple answer then I'll say that we are confident we will fulfil our promise," says Du Shaozhong from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. "The World Health Organization has set out perameters. So according to these guidelines we can achieve the target. This is not a problem."

The IOC has told the BBC that it's watching to see what impact Beijing's plans will have.

A month from the Games, the task is clear: in order for the Beijing Games to be a success, this city's last-minute emergency air quality measures will have to work.

We're going to keep on testing the air in the run-up to the Games - to see how Beijing gets on with its clean-air promise.

---

quote:

---

Pollution problem

* James Reynolds
* 15 Jul 08, 09:33 GMT

A week ago, we showed you that Beijing was still failing to meet its promise of clean air for the Olympic Games.

I said that we would carry on testing for particulates (PM10) every day in the run-up to the Games. We've done so.

Here's what we've found over the last week...

We also took photos every day from the same spot in central Beijing. Click here to see a gallery.

It's important to say this - our measurements are just a snapshot. We've measured for a single period in the middle of Beijing in the middle of the day. The hand-held device that we're using has a margin of error of about 20%.

But our readings show that Beijing has continued to exceed the World Health Organisation's most generous PM10 standards (remember - Beijing promised that the air during the Olympics would meet WHO standards). On two days out of the last seven, we detected particulate levels far above the WHO's guidelines.

But Beijing insists it still has time to get it right (it would also say that its own readings show PM10 levels which are much lower than ours.) On July 20th, this city's imposing a series of emergency clean air measures - more than a million cars will be taken off the streets, and all construction work will have to stop. That gives 19 days for the dust and the particles to settle before the Games begin.

We'll carry on testing to see what difference these emergency measures make.

---