This year has seen a great change to the Beijing air quality bulletins. The weekly report has been changed to daily report; then the pollutant of total suspended particles (TSP) in the report has been replaced by absorbed particles; and thirdly, four more air quality monitoring spots were added to the original 8.

Why did the city make these adjustments? As the deputy director of Beijing EPA explained, Beijing is moving to become a cosmopolitan city and is applying to host Olympic in 2008, and of course should take the lead in environment monitoring and supervision. The weekly air quality report is not timing. In TSP, the most harmful elements are those with diameters smaller than 10 micron; in addition the particles smaller than 2.5 micron are an important pollution factor affecting the visibility¡­Nox include both ? and ?. The former is basically not harmful to human bodies, but the latter is very toxic...

It is reported that Beijing EPA is setting up an automatic monitoring system of air quality using a loan of US$3.2 million from the French government. This system has 24 branch monitoring stations, covering all the urban and suburban areas of Beijing...