China vows to rectify 'underestimated' air pollution levels

Beijing, Nov 12(

"We hope the new move can allay the public's fears." Beijing's Monitoring Center Vice Director Hua Lei said.

The move comes in the wake of Beijing's environmental bureau figures being inconsistent with that of the US embassy monitoring station statistics.

Chinese leaders have reportedly equipped their offices and homes with expensive filtration systems to protect themselves against adverse impacts of air pollution.

China's Environmental Protection Vice-Minister Zhang Lijun conceded that China's air quality failed to meet the World Health Organisation standards.

The Chinese Government said key industrial cities would try to reduce particulate pollution by about ten per cent in the next four years, Xinhua reports.

Several Chinese celebrities called on the government to adopt stringent pollution monitoring methods.

Twitter's Chinese version, Weibo's founder Pan Shiyi slammed the government for providing inaccurate pollution statistics.

"If people know how serious the problem is, they can prevent air pollution and change their unhealthy lifestyles and habits. With their rising quality of life, Beijing residents are increasingly concerned about the environment," the Telegraph quoted Shiyi, as saying.

"China is among the worst polluted places by particulate matter in the world, and the concentration of [particulates] in most Chinese cities is higher than the safe levels called for by air quality guidelines published by the World Health Organisation," Tsinghua University's Environmental Science and Engineering Professor Hao Jiming said. (