Since the beginning of the heating period, heavy pollution occurred 5 days in a row in Lanzhou. The citizens are very irritated. The local government decided to adopt the emergency measures to prevent and treatment the soot and dust. The soot emission would be rigorously controlled in Lanzhou from November 26th to the end of next January.

The air quality in Lanzhou is one of the worst in the world. Lanzhou is the only city in China that refuses the diesel fuel vehicles. Even if Lanzhou does not use coal at all, the air quality there would still be worse than Grade III. Lanzhou took a series of measures to control the soot emission. Some of them are: blowing up the chimney of a power plant, banning vehicles with black tail gas emission, have "no cars day", shutting down factories, limiting industrial productions and afforestation. Still the Lanzhou EPA received so many calls about the heavy air pollution.

The Qinghai-Lanzhou natural gas transfer project will be completed next year. This will help the reduction of the environmental pollution in the city.