Official cuts through smoke on new AQI

Earlier this month, officials announced a new Air Quality Index making it easier for the public to understand the health risks they face from the city's pollution.

But getting details of how the index is calculated shows that officials are still more accustomed to producing haze than light.

He Xiaoxia, an environmentalist from the NGO Green Beagle, said Wednesday that the new AQI scheduled to come into effect on January 1 "should be the same" as the standard used by the US Embassy.

The new index replaces an opaque system put into place in October that measured PM 2.5, the dangerous tiny particles that can enter the smallest spaces in people's lungs, but used a scale that was hard to understand.

The new AQI came after local authorities for years did not measure PM 2.5, hiding the true extent of air pollution. Frustrated Beijingers started measuring and posting PM 2.5 data themselves.

When the Global Times reporter tried to confirm the details of the new AQI at a media event held by the bureau, an anonymous media officer refused to talk about it. She said details would be released in another media event, which never materialized.

In follow-up enquires, Zhai told the Global Times that there is "no comparison" between the standard set by the US Embassy and the new standard that Beijing is to use.

"Besides, it's not up to us to make the comparison since this is at the national level," she said. "You need to ask the Ministry of Environmental Protection instead."

When the Global Times reached the Ministry of Environmental Protection on Friday for detailed information on the new AQI, they requested the Global Times send a fax. During a follow-up telephone call, they said they would not respond at all.

Qiu Qihong, an engineer of the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center, confirmed that the new AQI was the same system as the Americans were using.

He said this system measured more kinds of air pollutants than the previous one.

"By assessing these additional elements, the measurement will become much stricter, and therefore we could have a more realistic air quality report," he said.