China's air and water quality improves
The air quality in 338 Chinese cities improved in 2018, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said on Monday.
Surface water quality in rivers and lakes also improved last year.
The ministry said 338 cities enjoyed good air quality on 79.3 percent of days last year, up 1.3 percentage points year on year, meeting the air quality target for the year.
In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the share of days with good air quality stood at 50.5 percent, a year-on-year increase of 1.2 percentage points, while the PM2.5 density of the region dropped by 11.8 percent year on year to 60 micrograms per cubic meter. The Yangtze River Delta region saw the share of days with good air quality up by 2.5 percentage points to 74.1 percent while the PM2.5 density dropped by 10.2 percent to 44 micrograms per cubic meter.
Harbin and Changchun in northeast China were among the cities that saw major air quality improvements last year.
China released a three-year action plan on air pollution control last year, vowing to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by more than 15 percent by 2020 compared with 2015 levels.
Cities at prefecture level and above should see their numbers of good air days reach 80 percent annually, and the percentage of heavily polluted days decrease by more than 25 percent from 2015 levels, according to the plan.
Meanwhile, surface water quality improved in 2018, with more samples taken from river and lakes reaching standards fit for human use.
Among the 1,940 samples from across China last year, 71 percent were considered grade III or better, meaning they were suitable for drinking and fishing, the environment ministry said, an increase of 3.1 percentage points from 2017.
The amount of “below grade V” water that cannot be used in either agriculture or industry fell by 1.6 percentage points to 6.7 percent in 2018.
Phosphorus and ammonium nitrate, which mainly come from industrial waste water, pesticides and organic fertilizers, were identified as the major pollutants of water pollution.
Chemical oxygen demand, a measure used to determine organic content in water, was also found to exceed the national level in the “below grade V” rivers.
China is attempting to clean up black and stinky streams flowing through cities, and improve its natural reserves.