14.08.2008
Analyzing air quality in Beijing
3.3 million cars take their toll on Beijing’s air quality. (Copyright: Stefan Norra)
China intends to significantly reduce air pollutant emissions by industry and traffic for the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing this summer. The country is being supported in its efforts by researchers of the
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) that have been analysing the particulate load in the city of 15 million inhabitants. The goals of the study are to determine the success of measures to reduce particulate loads and to monitor the rise of air pollution after the games. The bi-national project is being supported by the China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
To improve air quality during the Olympic summer games, the Chinese government has restricted the number of vehicles permitted to drive in Beijing by half, equipped coal-heated restaurants with filters and temporarily shut down parts of the region’s heavy industry. Geo-ecologist Dr. Stefan Norra and his team from the Institute of Mineralogy and Geochemistry at
Universität Karlsruhe will be analysing the mass and chemical composition of airborne particles daily until late autumn. Research findings with regard to how quickly the particulate load in the atmosphere increases once the Chinese government’s ad-hoc measures to improve air quality cease will be especially interesting for the scientific community.
More:
http://www.kit.edu/ http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/
