Some point the finger at vehicle emissions, others blame fossil fuel burning

Jan 3, 2014 07:17 GMT  ·  By
Specialists have not yet agreed on what is causing Beijing's air pollution crisis
   Specialists have not yet agreed on what is causing Beijing's air pollution crisis

China has for some time now been dealing with a so-called airpocalypse, and Beijing is one of the urban areas hit the hardest by this crisis. What’s interesting is that, currently, experts are pretty much clueless about what caused air pollution levels in said city to spike up.

Thus, a report made public by the country’s Academy of Sciences this past December 30 says that, according to evidence at hand, the practice of burning fossil fuels for energy is to blame for the fact that air quality in Beijing is now worse than it has been in years.

The same report stresses that, although this urban area presently accommodates an impressive 5.5 million cars, vehicle emissions have very little – if anything – to do with the air pollution crisis.

More precisely, specialists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences maintain that, for the time being at least, cars in Beijing should be blamed for less than 4% of the amount of PM2.5, i.e. fine particulates whose diameter measures less than 2.5 micrometers, hovering over the city.

The report also shows that coal burning, industrial processes and secondary inorganic aerosol, i.e. particles that form as a result of various pollutants’ interacting with one another, should be held accountable for 18%, 25% and 26% of Beijing’s air pollution, respectively.

South China Morning Post tells us that, less than 24 hours after this report hit the public eye, Pan Tao, the current president of the Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection, spoke to the press and said that the Academy of Sciences specialists were wrong.

According to Pan Tao, not only are vehicle emissions a major cause of Beijing’s ongoing air pollution crisis, they are in fact the main culprit behind it.

The president of the Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection referenced several other studies carried out by specialists working with research institutes other than the Academy of Sciences, and various universities, and said that, all things considered, vehicle emissions probably accounted for 20-30% of the city’s air pollution.

Pan Tao added that evidence indicated that cars were to blame for 42% and 32% of the total amount of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds hovering over Beijing, respectively.

Since one can only deal with a problem when one knows exactly what that problem is, here’s hoping that experts will soon be able to pin down the culprits behind China’s airpocalypse.