Working under the auspices of the futuristic-sounding Bureau of Weather Modification, scientists have been practicing techniques to induce rain showers before the Games that would wash away pollutants. Beijing's planners have created almost overnight a forest twice the size of New York's Central Park on a 1,750-acre site just north of the Olympic village in order to raise oxygen levels.
Nearly a dozen factories are in the process of closing or relocating outside Beijing, including a massive steelworks with 120,000 employees. Factories hundreds of miles away in the Inner Mongolia region and Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong provinces will suspend operations during the Olympic period. About 1.5 million cars -- half of those in the city -- will be banned from the streets during the same period. Beijing recently improved emission standards for automobiles and opened new subway lines.
Zhang Lijun, deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters at a news conference Tuesday in Beijing that China would keep a commitment to improve air quality that it made in 2001 when it submitted its Olympic bid.
"After we fully implement all of the Olympic measures, it will be no problem for the air quality to meet acceptable standards. We can deliver on our commitment," Zhang said.
Beijing occupies an unfortunate location in an inland basin that is frequently swept by sandstorms from the Gobi Desert. Mountains on three sides of the city trap the emissions of a booming capital of 17 million people. The average amount of airborne particulate matter, known as PM10 in environmental jargon, is six times the standard recommended by the World Health Organization. (By comparison, Los Angeles' rating is about twice the WHO standard.)
'Deep breath and relax'
Jeff Ruffolo, a public relations consultant to the Beijing Olympics who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, says the concerns about air quality are similar to what he heard in the run-up to the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
"At the end it was fine, and it will be in Beijing too," he said. "Everybody should take a proverbial deep breath and relax."
The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee announced last month that major pollutants -- particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide -- in the city's air had dropped 13.8% since Beijing won the Olympic bid. But one American expert, Steven Q. Andrews, recently produced a study that said many of the statistical gains were achieved by moving air quality monitors to less polluted areas of Beijing.
