China struggles to curb air pollution ahead of Olympics

21 August, 2007:

Beijing, the capital city of China, embarked on a revolutionary, four-day-long pollution control experiment on August 17, 2007, ordering over a million cars off the roads.

This is an attempt to decongest the streets and bring down air pollution in time for the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing in August 2008.

The thick smog that hangs over Beijing city has raised fears about athletes’ health. If the ban on cars works, it will be continued during the Olympic Games.

Streets with traffic snarls and badly polluted air are two of the biggest concerns of the Olympic organizers.

In the second week of August 2007, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, had warned that some events such as long-distance races might have to be postponed as pollution in the Olympic Games area was found to be so high as to affect the performance of athletes.

On the first day of the ban, Beijing’s authorities allowed only cars with number plates ending in odd numbers on the roads.

A posse of 6,500 policemen will fine transgressors to the equivalent of about £8, but only a few violated the ban, which will continue for four days, alternating odd numbers and even numbers.

The Chinese authorities are afraid of the dense pollution surrounding the Olympic facilities during the Olympics. Athletes inhale 10 times as deeply as do office workers.

It is the Environmental Protection Bureau that monitors air pollution, much of which is generated by industries, sand storms, and cars in the provinces surrounding the capital. The air quality will be measured on the last day of the four-day ban to see if the traffic experiment has had any impact.

Fewer cars probably will reduce pollution, but scientists say that up to a third of the fine dust, which they call particulate matter, in the Beijing air, and up to half of the ground-level ozone comes in from outside the city. So even if the Beijing authorities take all the cars off the streets, it would not solve the problem.

Since winning the Olympic bid in 2001, Beijing has spent billions of yuan moving steel mills and other polluting industries to the outskirts of town in an attempt to improve air quality. Large sums have also been allocated to the laying of new expressways and subway tracks.

However, despite the huge budgets and efforts made at solving the twin problems of congestion and pollution, China’s capital city continues to suffer from vehicular gridlock and smoggy air.