China Turns to Emergency Measures to Improve Air For Olympics

With Beijing’s skies still hazy, China has unveiled emergency pollution controls in case air quality does not meet standards when the Olympics begin on August 8. Already thousands of factories have been shuttered and millions of cars pulled from the roads through alternate-day driving restrictions. The new rules would remove an additional 10 percent of cars daily and would extend to several cities in Heibei Province, which is home to 91 million people. Further factory closures would reduce levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are produced by factories that use solvents. “For Beijing city, a key variable for determining smog levels is VOCs,” said the China climate program director for the World Resource Institute. “If you cut the car levels without cutting VOCs, you can end up with the problem they’ve faced in the last week.”