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November 23, 2016

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Home » Metro » Environment

Breathing clean air: a challenging top priority

SHANGHAI last month chalked up its best air quality in five years, but can we always rely on favorable climatic conditions for a breath of fresh air?

The average density of the city’s major air pollutant PM2.5 was 22 micrograms per cubic meter in October, according to the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center. That’s a 53.2 percent decrease from a year earlier. For the whole month, the Air Quality Index rose no higher than 100. The average density of other air pollutants, such as PM10, SO2 and NO2, also declined.

In the first 10 months of the year, the average density of PM2.5 in the city fell 14 percent from a year earlier to 43 micrograms per cubic meter.

The World Health Organization’s recommended annual average standard is 10 micrograms, while China’s target cap for PM2.5 is 35 micrograms.

“Our plan is to reduce the yearly average density to 42 by 2020, and then to 35 after that,” said Zhang Quan, director of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau. “However, there is still a long way to go.”

Climate has been a welcome ally in the cause in recent months. Environmental protection officials credit good air distribution and government anti-pollution measures for some improvement in air quality. In August, Shanghai ranked eighth among 74 major cities in a national ranking of air quality.

However, more pollution is expected in autumn and winter, when stagnant air conditions often prevail and smog creeps in from northern areas of the country.

Among government actions aimed at reducing air pollution are promotion of green cars, use of cleaner oil for ships and tighter controls over so-called “volatile organic compounds” discharged from local factories. The compounds are dangerous to human health and harm the environment.

According to Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau, 766 companies have completed factory overhauls to control VOCs.

Car emissions, of course, are a major target of air clean-up measures. A crackdown on heavily polluting vehicles this year has resulted in some 35,000 polluting, usually older vehicles, being removed from the road and bans are now in place to prevent certain polluting vehicles entering the Outer Ring Road area.

The government is moving toward electric bus fleets and encouraging the private purchase of green cars by offering preferential policies that include a free license plate for non-polluting cars. An auction system for standard license plates has limited the number of registered cars on the road, and vehicles with out-of-town plates are barred from driving in certain downtown areas.

Off land, low sulphur oil is now required to be used on ships docking in Shanghai for more than an hour. The local standard stipulates ship oil must contain no more than 50 milligrams of sulphur per kilogram. That compares with the current national standard of 350 milligrams.

Shipowners and oil suppliers who violate the regulation face fines of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,450). Indeed, environment authorities have also slapped stiffer fines on industrial polluters, quintupling the previous maximum to 1 million yuan per offense.

In the first nine months of this year, 2,160 pollution-related cases were reported, involving aggregate fines of 154 million yuan. That was up almost two-fifths from a year earlier.

“The fines were so low in the past that some companies just ignored environmental regulations,” said Zhang. “The higher fines are a deterrent.”




 

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