City’s air quality ranks No. 6 in 2020

Writer: Han Ximin  |  Editor: Holly Wang  |  From: Shenzhen Daily  |  Updated: 2021-01-18

The air quality in Shenzhen ranked sixth out of 168 key cities in China in 2020, statistics from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment showed Friday.

The city’s average PM2.5 concentration, a key indicator of air pollution, stood at 19 micrograms per cubic meter in 2020, down 5 micrograms per cubic meter compared to the previous year.

The top five cities were Haikou in Hainan Province, Lhasa in Tibet, Zhoushan in Zhejiang, Xiamen in Fujian and Huangshan in Anhui.

Shenzhen was followed by Lishui in Zhejiang, Fuzhou in Fujian, Huizhou in Guangdong and Guiyang in Guizhou.

Other cities, specifically Ya’an and Suining in Sichuan, Taizhou in Zhejiang, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Zhaoqing and Dongguan in Guangdong, Kunming in Yunnan, Nanning in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Zhangjiakou in Hebei, took the places from the 11th to the 20th.

The top five cities with the worst air quality were Anyang in Henan Province, Shijiazhuang in Hebei, Taiyuan in Shanxi, and Tangshan and Handan in Hebei.

Statistics show that the 337 Chinese cities at prefecture level and above had 87 percent of days of good air quality in 2020, 5 percentage points higher than the previous year. The average PM2.5 concentration of these cities was 33 micrograms per cubic meter, down by 8.3 percent. The average concentration of PM10, or inhalable particles, was 56 micrograms per cubic meter, down by 11.1 percent. The average concentration of ozone was 138 micrograms per cubic meter, down by 6.8 percent.

The city’s 2020 Blue Sky Sustainable Development Action Plan was rolled out to tackle sources of pollution through the treatment of 80 items in 10 projects such as the pollution by diesel-powered heavy vehicles and emissions of vehicles, engineering machines and vessels. Each district (and new area) was assigned a specific target to control the PM2.5 concentration. In addition, the city also worked out a specific strategy to treat ozone pollution in the action plan.