Olympic host city Beijing was blanketed in smog on Sunday, as a senior Chinese environmental official warned more measures might be needed to clear the capital’s air for the Games.
With just 12 days to go before the start of the world’s biggest sports event, the dense white haze left visibility in the city of 17-million drop at just a few hundred metres.
As the first Olympic athletes started arriving in Beijing, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, suggested the city would have to do more to ensure blue skies for the Games.
“If we encounter extremely unfavourable climatic conditions that make it harder to disperse polluting particles, we will adopt even tougher measures,” he said, according to the People’s Daily website.
Du said the extra measures were “under preparation” but gave no additional details as to what they might entail, the report said.
In a separate report on China Radio International’s website, Du was quoted as saying the situation was not satisfactory.
“The air quality in Beijing must be improved. Seventy percent of the year the air is good, but for the remaining 30%, the air quality still does not meet the standard,” Du said.
International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge warned last year that poor air quality during the Games could result in the suspension of some events, particularly endurance races such as the marathon.
Sunday’s smog came despite a broad last-ditch campaign to reduce air pollution by closing factories and banning more than one million cars from the roads every day.
Under an initiative launched last week, cars with odd and even number plates are allowed on streets only on alternate days. Beijing had earlier taken 300 000 heavily-polluting vehicles off the road.
China’s capital has been struggling for the past decade to improve its notoriously poor air quality, introducing a total of over 200 measures, many of them targeting the extensive use of coal burning.
City authorities regularly publish reports about the improvement of the air quality that the measures have allegedly brought about — reports that are often at odds with the personal impressions of long-term residents.
For example, the China Radio International website published data showing “good air quality” for 22 days since the beginning of July. – AFP