The first quarter of 2017 saw good air quality in Guangdong with AOI (air quality index) reaching 92.9%, according to Department of Environmental Protection of Guangdong Province.
East, west and north Guangdong dominates the list of 21cities ranked according to air quality. The top ten cities are Shanwei, Zhanjiang, Heyuan, Shenzhen, Huizhou, Meizhou, Shantou, Maoming, Zhuhai and Chaozhou, among which, Shenzhen, Huizhou and Zhuhai are in Pearl River Delta.
PM2.5 is the key pollutant, followed by Ozone. The average concentration of PM2.5 is 42 mg/m3 and that of PM10 is 60 mg/m3.
The top three cities are Shanwei, Zhanjiang, Heyuan.
Causes of pollution: extreme weather and industrial production
Among national key economic regions, AQI of Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are 90.0%, 76.1% and 52.1% respectively.
However, compared to the same period of 2016 (AQI: 94.9%), AQI in Guangdong showed a slight decline in the first quarter of this year, though it had had an obvious increase over the same period of 2015 (AQI: 86.3%).
Experts explain that extreme weather and an increasing demand for industrial production are main causes of decease of AQI. Warm and wet weather made pollutant diffusion hard. The development of production in heavy industry and structural material led to an expanding need for transportation and exerted pressure on pollutant emission.
Government calls for further regulation and control
Based on air condition of the first quarter, the government calls for further regulation and control on industrial pollution.
Guangdong has set three major targets of environmental protection in the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). The first is that the overall air quality should be up to national standard or higher level.
Second, Guangdong will try best to eliminate heavy polluted weather and decrease medium level and light level polluted weather.
In addition, more efforts will be taken to address Ozone and PM2.5 pollution by controlling emission of nitrogen oxides and VOCs.
By Abby
