Beijing detains waste firm workers in fake air pollution data case
- Eight people held after real-time sulphur dioxide readings found to be manipulated
- Company reportedly at the centre of the accusations handled most of the capital’s Covid-19 medical waste
Police in Beijing detained eight people from the company after finding numerous changes to sulphur dioxide data in the records of the company’s automatic monitoring equipment, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday.
It is the first case of its kind in the Chinese capital, according to the report.
Xinhua did not name the company but online news site Jiemian said the firm was Beijing Ruentex Environment Technology Corp, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Ruentex Group.
Beijing Ruentex has handled waste disposal in a number of outbreaks, including Ebola and bird flu, according to the company’s website.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the only waste management company in the capital to handle medical waste, treating 80 per cent of the capital’s output, Taiwanese financial newspaper Commercial Times reported in 2021.
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Xinhua said the company had three sets of automatic air monitors sending real-time data to environmental authorities.
A number of supervisors allegedly asked staff to manipulate data when they realised that the company’s sulphur dioxide emissions had exceeded standards, the report said.
Eight people in the company were detained on suspicion of polluting the environment, it added.
Beijing Ruentex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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This is not the first time police or pollution inspectors have accused companies of fabricating air quality data.
In 2021, environment officials in the southwestern province of Sichuan found one company had altered the parameters of its automatic air pollutant monitoring equipment, resulting in a huge difference between the data sent to environmental authorities and the concentration of pollutants actually emitted.
Three people in the company were detained and the case is being investigated, according to China Environment News, a newspaper affiliated with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
In 2017, two ceramic companies in the central province of Hubei were found fabricating online data.
The two companies were fined 12.8 million yuan (US$1.78 million) in total and the persons responsible were handed over to judicial authorities, according to the province’s Department of Ecology and Environment.
Ruan Qingyuan, technical director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based environmental NGO, said the disclosure of automated monitoring data had regressed in recent years.
“[We] hope the quality of automated monitoring data can be improved under public scrutiny,” Jiemian quoted her as saying.
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In 2021, local environment bureaus cooperated with public security and prosecution agencies on a special campaign to crack down on falsification of automatic monitoring data.
By the end of that year, a total of 270 cases involving falsifying data had been investigated, and more than 49 million yuan in fines imposed, the environment ministry said.
Zhao Qunying, director of the ministry’s emergency management office, said last month that the ministry attached great importance to the quality of automatic monitoring data, and it had “zero tolerance” for the falsification of such information.
“There are many means of generating fake data and they mainly happen in the processes of pollutant sampling and pre-processing, instrumental analysis and data transmission,” Zhao said.
“To ensure the accuracy of the data, we need to keep up pressure on those who falsify data.”
