Sports

leaning the air in Beijing
by Claudia Sonea

Beijing boasts over the latest data of pollution levels. On Wednesday they made public the fact that reducing traffic and shutting down factories has given results by reducing the levels of pollution and finally showing blue sky over the capital city.
The Olympic Games are closer and closer and some of the 10500 athletes are heading towards Beijing or better said towards neighbor areas like Japan in order to avoid the polluted air. Their concerns about the air quality were making even the Olympic organizers restless, thus Beijing officials took interest into the matter and implemented some measures like reducing traffic at half of the 3.3 million vehicles and ceasing all construction and activity in factories in the surrounding area. Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau stated for the AP that the measures have had success and if in the forthcoming days the air pollution level will not lower than the measures of pulling cars off the roan and halting factories’ activity will extend.
In the past 11 days the air pollution index was below 100 and met national standards (below 50- good, between 51 and 100- moderate) for seven days, while for the other four it was over 100. Some say that the tropical storm that hit China this week had brought a cooling wind that together with the rain had managed to clear pollutants. After all the weather is a good cleaner of pollution, but that makes people question whether Beijing would succeed without favorable weather to keep the air clean.
Many athletes are considering wearing special air masks even during training like those from New Zealand or Japan, while others have withdrew. And why wouldn’t they do it if the World Bank got to the conclusion that 16 of the 20 worst polluted cities are in China. At least they are trying to improve and show some flexibility and that is a great thing coming from a strict regime like the Chinese one.


related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080730/ap_on_re_as/oly_china_pollution;_ylt=Aq4HZJco.vDdORZAbKVqbZys0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:39 AM