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Beijingers enjoy fresher air, blue sky
Beijingers breathed fresher air and enjoyed blue skies for 224 days last year, recording the best air quality in the national capital in recent years, a local environmental official has said. Pan Shuda, chief engineer with the city environmental protection bureau, said that there were no sandstorms and only one case of floating dust was reported last year, although there was less rainfall than in the previous years. Compared with 2002, the content of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter in the air dropped by 9 percent, 5.3 percent and 15.1 percent in 2003, according to Pan. He attributed the improvement in local environment to the city government's efforts to reduce pollution by controlling coal burning, automobile emission, and floating dust. Beijing transformed over 12,000 coal-burning furnaces to use clean energy, about 10,000 households used electricity for daily life instead of burning coal, and more than 15,000 restaurants and dining halls installed facilities to purify soot. Pan said over 90 percent of more than 2 million motor vehicles in the city had met the requirements for discharging emission. |
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