Beijing air quality best in 10 years

Beijing's air quality is still poor, despite improvements in recent years, a senior environment expert said.

Zhu Tong, a professor at Peking University who participated in Beijing's Olympic air quality panel last year, said residents in the city are prone to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases because of Beijing's poor air quality, although the harm has been mitigated over the years.

"Air quality has indeed improved greatly, if we compare it with that of 10 years ago. But there is definitely more to be done in order to ensure the health of the residents," he said.

Zhu was commenting on a government announcement that air quality in Beijing this year had been at its best level in a decade, as the city steps up pollution control measures ahead of the 60th anniversary of China.

Beijing recorded 214 "blue sky days", 82.3 percent of the total, from January to mid-September, 18 days more than the same period last year, the city's environmental authorities said.

This means it would only take an extra 46 blue sky days for the city to achieve its goal of 260 this year.

Beijing has a five-grade classification of air quality: a reading below 50 is "excellent"; from 51 to 100 "fairly good"; 101 to 200 "slightly polluted"; 201 to 300 "poor"; and more than 301 "hazardous". Days with excellent or fairly good air quality are counted as blue sky days.

Authorities attributed the improvement in air quality to the ban on high-polluting vehicles, the relocation of factories in downtown areas, and switching to new fuels like natural gas.

But Zhu said the current monitoring system for Beijing's air quality "cannot reflect the full picture."

"Some of the pollutants required in the international standards for tracking air quality haven't been covered here and the allowed pollutant concentration level in China is much higher," he said.

Zhu, however, commended the city's long-term initiative in constantly raising the emission standards of vehicles, blamed as the biggest contributor to Beijing's air pollution.

Beijing announced that it would upgrade its vehicle emission standard to Euro V in around 2012 to further cut tail gas and better air quality.

The standard, which has just been adopted in Europe, would be first imposed on new vehicle models in Beijing and then extended to all vehicles as authorities gradually retire older models that do not meet the standard.

"It's one good way of reducing emissions on the road, but the government also needs to make people drive less by relying on public transportation and switching to new-fuel vehicles," Zhu said.