Air quality gets worse in west China
Print Edition
AIR pollution in western China jumped in the first three months of this year, according to a report published yesterday by Greenpeace, while the vast majority of cities nationwide failed to meet standards.
China’s cities are often hit by heavy pollution, blamed on coal-burning by power stations, heavy industry and vehicle use.
Government policy was effectively moving pollution from the heavily populated cities of the eastern seaboard to other areas, Greenpeace said.
The five cities with the highest level of PM2.5 — particles small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs — were all in the westernmost region of Xinjiang.
Kashgar, an ancient oasis town on the Silk Road, was by far the most polluted city with an average PM2.5 concentration of 276.1 micrograms per cubic meter for the three months of the year, government data compiled by Greenpeace showed — up 99 percent from the same period of last year.
The figure also rose 49 percent in the city of Hotan, also in Xinjiang.
Kashgar’s average concentration was more than 27 times the maximum annual average of 10 micrograms per cubic meter as recommended by the World Health Organization.
Beijing reported that its PM2.5 levels fell 27 percent to 67.7 micrograms per cubic meter in the period, while in Shanghai they dropped by 12 percent to 60 micrograms per cubic meter.
Beijing “has enacted many pollution limiting guidelines in the east that have had the unintended effect of encouraging pollution-emitting industry to shift investment to central and western areas that have yet to become subject to the same controls,” Greenpeace said in a statement.
New coal-fired power plants have been concentrated in western regions, with 75 percent of permits in 2015 granted in central or western China, according to the environmental group’s analysis, which used data from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection.
The average PM2.5 concentration for the 362 cities monitored was 60.7 micrograms per cubic meter, with 310 cities failing to meet China’s own standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.
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