BEIJING —
Beijing warned Monday that
heavy air pollution is likely during the
Winter Olympics, but said
emergency plans were in place to ensure the Games are not disrupted by smog.
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The Chinese capital declared "war on
pollution" after winning the Olympics bid in 2015, shutting down dozens of
coal plants and relocating heavy industries to shed its status as one of the
world's most polluted cities.
But air quality is still far below
World Health Organization standards despite dramatic improvements in recent years,
according to state data released this month.
"The Beijing Winter
Olympic and
Paralympic Games coincide with the end of winter and the start of spring in
northern China, when weather conditions are extremely unfavorable,"
China's environment ministry spokesman Liu Youbin said at a press conference
Monday.
"When heavy pollution is predicted, all
localities will launch emergency plans."
These include cutting production at
polluting companies with a relatively small economic impact in the host cities
of Beijing and Zhangjiakou, Liu said.
Improvements have been made in recent years.
The concentration in Beijing's air of ultrafine PM2.5 particles, which are
blamed for a rise in lung cancer, heart attacks, and premature babies, dropped
to 33 micrograms per cubic meter last year.
That figure was down a third from the level
in 2013 when the capital had some of the world's worst air quality, according
to Beijing's environment bureau.
But it is still six times higher than the
five micrograms per cubic meter recommended by the WHO.
On Monday, Beijing's air quality reading
reached 218 on an index by Swiss technology company IQAir, placing it in
"very unhealthy" territory.
In an attempt to clear the smoggy skies,
steel plants around the city were ordered to cut production by half in August
and coal stoves in 25 million households across northern China were replaced
with gas or electric burners ahead of the Games.
China hopes to use the Winter Olympics to
showcase its green credentials and has built dozens of wind and solar energy
farms to power the sporting spectacle.
But nearly 60 percent of China's economy is
powered by coal and the country has seen a surge in imports of the fossil fuel
and mining to help combat a power crunch that has crippled factories.
China was home to 42 of the world's 100 most
polluted cities in 2020, according to IQAir, but Beijing was not one of them.
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