Nearly 8,000 Chinese companies were
found to be violating environmental standards during the latest round of nation-wide air
pollution inspection in April, the country’s environmental authorities have
announced.
Inspection teams carried out environmental supervision in 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megalopolis and nearby areas and found 7,909 of 11,674 companies checked, or 67.7 percent, breaking the rules, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said.
Polluted water discharged by a substandard factory. /CFP Photo
A company producing wall materials in the city of Handan, north China’s Hebei Province, was found to have failed to install pollution control facilities, releasing untreated pollutants in the air. This is by far not an isolated. A total of 724 of the 7,909 companies were found to lack functional pollution control equipment.
Seventeen companies were suspected of falsifying data uploaded to the online monitoring system, as the volume of pollution emission they reported is by and large less than their real discharge.
Meanwhile, these companies were also found to lack effective dust prevention measures.
Of the violating companies, 2,695 are small-scale firms, equipped with poor technology. The 28 cities had reported 56,000 of such companies to the MEP by the end of March – a situation that will present serious problems for the inspection team.
According to the work plan of air pollution prevention and control in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and neighboring areas, these companies should be screened and restructured by October.
Beijing regularly suffers from heavy levels of air pollution with O3 as the primary pollutant. /CFP Photo
In April, the ministry announced the campaign on air pollution in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and neighboring areas.
The share of days with good air quality in the north China megalopolis fell 0.7 percentage points in the first quarter of 2017 compared with a year earlier, while the share of days with heavy pollution rose 5.1 percentage points.
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and some neighboring areas are expecting a smothering weekend as heavy ozone pollution is bringing higher temperatures and grayer skies.
