It's been a dreadful week for air in Beijing with the air quality index exceeding 900 after last Thursday's (May 4) sandstorm attack. Residents throughout the city were left with no choice but to hunker down and wait for the sandstorm to pass, and for the air to improve. And yet, that didn't stopped some people from heading out and trying to manipulate the smoggy circumstances ...
READ: Killer Winds Cause Havoc Throughout Beijing
On Thursday afternoon, an astute Weibo user named "@The Elder of Two Big Toes" posted a number of photographs that showed a municipal anti-smog truck parked next to a municipal air monitoring system in the area of the Beijing Olympic Sports Center.
The massive anti-smog device helps improve air quality in urban centers by spraying a fine mist of water into the air to help clean the air of contaminants such as the PM10-sized sand particles that have innundated the city recently. As seen in the photo, the anti-smog device appears to be turned on and is facing what the poster says is a local air monitoring station.
"The Elder of Two Big Toes" did not flatly accuse the city of trying to tamper with air quality readings, but only asked: "Is this counterfeiting data?"
One thing is sure: the air quality monitor located at the Beijing Olympic Sports Center featured an air quality reading that was significately better than the city average.
As of 3pm last Thursday, the AQI reading at Beijing Olympic Sports Center was just 528 compared to the city-wide average of 699. The photos of the anti-smog truck together with the air monitoring station were posted at 4.18pm.
Netizens had their own opinions about Beijing's cleanest air monitor. One person wrote, "Our leaders have capable ways," while another said, "What a disgrace!" Others cited Chinese proverbs to say "Deception of others and yourself" and also "Bury your head in the sand."
The municipal branch of the Bureau for Environmental Protection has since responded to the story, writing in a Weibo post that it takes a "zero tolerance" policy towards any manipulation of air quality monitoring data.
Despite a government promise to crackdown on fake air quality readings, officials have repeatedly tried to cover up China's bad air by tampering with air monitoring equipment.
An air monitoring station installed on the top of a building in Hanzhou, Shaanxi had water sprayed onto it from an adjacent building during a severe smog attack in 2015, while Xi'an officials attempted to manipulate the readings of an air monitoring station in Xi'an in 2016 by obstructing its aperature with cotton gauze.
Just this past April, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection found that one-third of manufacturers in the country's polluted north had tampered with emissions data in order to avoid heavy fines. And yet, the environmental protection bureau have shown themselves to also be "resourceful" when they asked air pollution app-maker Air Matters to simply cut-off their app's AQI readings at just 500 this past January.
More stories from this author here.
Twitter: @Sinopath
Images: Weibo