New Delhi: India is not the only country bearing the brunt of air pollution. China seems to be under the weather too.
Official data has declared January as the worst month in China where pollution is concerned, with northern areas being the worst affected.
Last month, the 338 cities monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) enjoyed good air quality on 60 per cent of days, down 6.7 percentage points from the same period last year.
The average density of PM2.5, fine particulate matter that causes smog, came in at 78 micrograms per cubic meter, up 14.7 per cent.
In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the share of days with good air quality during the month was merely 36.2 per cent, a year-on-year drop of 19.6 percentage points, the MEP said yesterday.
PM2.5 density in Beijing surged 70.6 per cent to 116 micrograms per cubic metre during the month, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The city of Haikou in Hainan Province continued to have the cleanest air out of the nation's 74 major cities, while Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province was the worst polluted.
The custom of celebrating the Lunar New Year with fireworks and crackers has been cited as the reason behind the surge in the density of PM2.5. In the month of January.
The MEP on Sunday named and shamed several cities in north China for not doing enough to cope with air pollution.
In an inspection on 18 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and neighbouring areas, the MEP found several problems in their response to air pollution, including inadequate planning and poor implementation.
(With PTI inputs)
