Cleaner air, but cities still below standard
Print Edition
THE air in 74 of China’s major cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, was cleaner last year, according to the 2015 China Environment State Report, but still substandard according to national standards.
They were among almost 80 percent of all China’s cities failing a national standard introduced in 2012.
That standard states that the yearly limit of PM2.5 particles, the main cause of urban smog, should be no higher than 35 micrograms per cubic meter, while the standard recommended by the World Health Organization is just 10.
But according to the report released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection yesterday, the average density of those particularly hazardous PM2.5 pollutants was 55 micrograms per cubic meter in the 74 cities, which also include Tianjin and those in the Yangtze River and Pearl River delta regions, despite the figures being a 14 percent decrease over 2014.
Around the country, air quality in 265 out of 338 rated cities (78.4 percent) failed the national standard last year.
The report also noted a slight improvement in the quality of water in the country’s major rivers and lakes.
According to water samples collected from 967 monitoring spots in 2015, 64.5 percent fell into Grade I, II and III, making them suitable for drinking, aquaculture and for use in nature reserves, respectively — a 1.4 percent increase compared to 2014. More than 26 percent were of Grade IV and V, making them suitable only for industrial and agricultural use, while just under 9 percent of samples were worse than Grade V, a slight decrease compared to 9.2 percent in 2014.
Polluted sea water was detected along China’s Liaodong Gulf, Bohai Gulf, Liaozhou Bay, Hangzhou Bay, and in the Yangtze and Pearl river estuaries, the report said.
Monitoring rain water last year in 480 cities and counties around the country revealed that 108, or 22.5 percent, reported acid rain. The areas were mainly at the south of the Yangtze River and east of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the report said.
The report also noted that 30 provinces and cities had floods in 2015, though casualties and damage were among the lowest recorded.
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