Nightly air pollution plagues Tiantongyuan

Environmental activists said Monday that there is more than one cause for the air pollution which has plagued residents in a major residential area nightly for over three years.

Residents from Tiantongyuan North, Changping district, said that the local environment department has pinned the blame on a nearby asphalt factory, but Chen Liwen, from NGO Nature University, warned that the pollution comes from multiple sources.　

"I went to that asphalt factory, which only operates at night, and that is certainly part of the source. I also discovered several burned trash piles in the neighborhood, and it seems some scavengers have tried to get the metal innards from plastic wires which can also lead to pollution," said Chen.

Also, Tiantongyuan still uses coal as winter heating fuel, another severe cause of the pollution, she said.　

"Witnesses told me the smoke from chimneys turns black at night. If that's true, then someone must be turning the air filters in the chimneys off at night, which would also explain the smell," she said.

One resident of Tiantongyuan North, surnamed Zhao, who is 36 and a medical researcher, said that although the air quality is fine during the day, at night a smell of burning plastic always makes her feel sick. It has continued for three years, she said.

"The smell comes after midnight and it makes me cough a lot and I can't sleep," she said.

Zhao said she posted her suffering on the online forum of the Tiantongyuan community, and many others had also complained.

The environmental department of Changping district received Zhao's complaint, and told the Global Times that it had pinpointed the Luxin Asphalt Factory, which is only two kilometers away from Zhao's compound and works at night, as the possible pollution source.

The department said Monday that it has warned the factory not to pollute the air. But Zhao says this has barely worked.

"In the first month the air quality did improve, but then it worsened," she said.

Tiantongyuan is the largest residential compound in Asia, and the population had reached 400,000 by June 2012, according to news portal qianlong.com.

The residential area was built on a former landfill, and from the 1950s on, household garbage was buried in its eastern section, while medical waste was buried in the western section, the Beijing News reported.