One month after the great winter smog cloud, authorities are backing down from the previous air-quality calculations (PM 10) due to netizen hounding and will start releasing PM2.5 measurements hourly starting January 23.
Read more on the growing Chinese awareness of the poor air-quality situation in Beijing
According to China Daily, Beijing's Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau should start publishing the information on their website and hope to establish enough monitoring stations around the city "to release real-time PM2.5 data by the end of 2012"
Currently, only six sub-stations scattered around Beijing are equipped to measure PM2.5. And while this year boasted 286 days of "blue skies" (based on the old calculations)--we're sure that with the stricter standards this year, that number's going to drop.
Photo via Tencent News
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I'm not sure what telling us how bad the air quality is helps anything. Of course it's a good thing to be open and inform your citizens of health hazards, but just adjusting a scale doesn't do anything at all to improve the air. Less talk of measurements and numbers and more talk of emissions controls please!!!