Local Vehicles Blamed for Majority of Beijing's Air Pollution

Beijing residents can't help but find themselves living under a cloud of uncertainty these days. At a moment's notice, local atmospheric conditions can swiftly change without reason, raising the city's average AQI levels by over 100 in a 24-hour-long span.

But, even as air pollution continues to be a problem afflicting many urban centers of China's northeast, the city of Beijing has but one message to curious residents wondering about the city's tempestuous bouts of smog: look inward.

Beijing's latest report on air pollution blames itself for the majority of the city's air pollution woes, reported the Beijing News.

Two-thirds of all Beijing-area PM2.5-type pollution are attributed to local sources, while one-third is attributed to outward-lying regional sources. Out of last year's annual average PM2.5 level of 58 micrograms per square meter, 20 came from outside of Beijing.

And with coal use largely banned throughout the city, local vehicle emissions have become Beijing's primary source of PM2.5 levels (45 percent). Flying dust came in second place at 16 percent, followed by industrial sources (12 percent), residential (12 percent), and other combined sources that include agricultural and natural sources (also 12 percent).

Coal use was only responsible for creating 3 percent of Beijing's total PM2.5 levels, said the report jointly-written by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Skeptics of the latest government report will find that authorities have been largely consistent with their findings.

Published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Engineering Academy in 2014, the last report also found Beijing to be mostly responsible for its own air pollution, determining 64 to 72 percent of all Beijing pollutants to have been produced locally.

However, Beijing's smoggy neighbors aren't entirely without blame. According to the latest report, regional sources have a stronger role to play when Beijing air pollution worsens.

When Beijing experiences days of medium air pollution (defined as having a PM2.5 average concentration between 115-150 micrograms per square meter), 34 to 50 percent of the smog is attributed to regional sources; and on days of heavy pollution (when Beijing's PM2.5 levels exceed 150), regional transmissions accounted for 55 to 75 percent of Beijing's smog.

If that sounds contradictory to the report's initial statement, skeptics should also note that the latest report also exposes each of the main polluters of Beijing even as local air quality continues to worsen.

Diesel trucks are the main polluters for vehicles, while local construction yards are mostly responsible for the city's flying dust; meanwhile, the city's main culprits for producing industrial air pollution come from the petrochemical, automotive, and printing industries. And yet, with all these problems singled out, the report arrived on a day when the local AQI exceeded 200, a trend we're forecast to see all week.

Image: k618.cn

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