Only 3 of 74 Chinese cities meet air quality standard
Just three of 74 major cities recorded met national air quality standards throughout last year, a senior environmental official revealed yesterday in Beijing. Only Haikou in Hainan, Lhasa in Tibet and Zhoushan in Zhejiang met new standards. Shenzhen was among the 10 cities with the best air quality.
Just three of 74 major cities recorded met national air quality standards throughout last year, a senior environmental official revealed yesterday in Beijing.
Shenzhen was among the 10 cities with the best air quality.
Wu Xiaoqing, deputy minister for environmental protection, said the smog-plagued Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area experienced air pollution on more than 60 per cent of days last year, the worst in the country.
Annual average levels of PM2.5 - tiny pollutant particles smaller than 2.5 microns that can penetrate deep into the lungs - reached 106 micrograms per cubic metre in the region, more than 10 times the World Health Organisation's safety limit of 10. The area also has seven of China's 10 most polluted cities.
Other built-up regions - city clusters in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas - also registered chronic smog problems.
