What other factors besides auto and factory pollution affect air quality?
Beijing’s air quality is affected both by emissions of pollutions that occur within Beijing and the regions upwind around the city. In New York City we have our own sources of pollution, mostly from traffic, but our air quality has much or more to do with pollution from areas upwind of the city. A big source of our pollution is power plants spread throughout the coal producing states. The same situation will exist in China, except with a bigger range of industrial sources. China has to cast a wide geographic net to capture all the emissions affecting Beijing’s air quality. I am cautiously optimistic that China will manage to do what is needed to substantially clean the air in Beijing during the Olympics. However, I’m a little concerned because their air pollution index seems skewed to high levels. So it’s important to reframe the range of pollutants as more of an international standard. It will be important to check whether the measures are effective in that context and not just on the
