Beijing clears the air as pollution purge yields 256 blue-sky days

Published on Monday 1 December 2008 21:38

BEIJING officials claimed yesterday they have already reached their target number of 256 "blue-sky days" this year, with the help of ambitious environmental measures, which the city imposed to cut emissions for the Olympic Games.

China's notoriously polluted capital of 17 million people reached the clean-air day target on Sunday – 31 days ahead of schedule.

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing's municipal environmental protection bureau, said: "The quality of our city's air has shown constant improvement over the past ten years."

Beijing had only 100 blue-sky days in 1998, when it introduced a clean-air campaign and began investing more than 10 billion to improve air quality.

The long-term measures, as well as more drastic efforts taken ahead of the Olympic Games in August, helped to reach the goal, the bureau said.

Beijing pulled half the city's 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, halted most construction and closed some factories in the capital and surrounding provinces ahead of the Games. Car emissions, Beijing's main source of pollution, were reduced by 60 per cent from a year earlier because of the measures.

So far this year, levels of inhalable particulate matter – tiny dust particles that are among the worst pollutants – were reduced by 16 per cent from a year earlier, and other pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, showed reductions of more than 20 per cent.

China's daily air pollution index, which ranges from 1 to 500, uses a standard calculation derived from levels of major pollutants. A reading below 50 is considered good, and 51 to 100 is moderate. Below 100 is considered a "blue-sky day".

Only 56 days have measured "good" so far this year, the bureau said. But environmentalists say a blue-sky day is still more polluted than what is considered healthy by the World Health Organisation.