 Chinese officials 'interfered' with air pollution data: media Beijing (AFP) Oct 25, 2016 - Police have arrested officials in charge of environmental protection in central China after they were accused of tampering with air quality monitoring data, local media said Tuesday. "Staff members interfered with the monitoring station a number of times, blocking the equipment with a cotton thread, which disrupted the collection of data," the Huashang Bao newspaper said. The "abnormal" readings, collected in the ancient city of Xi'an, alerted the national body for environmental protection, resulting in the opening of a police investigation, the newspaper added. A number of suspects have been arrested, Huashang Bao said, including the head of the monitoring station, his deputy and the director of the environmental protection bureau in Chang'an, a district of Xi'an. "It's truly terrible!", the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party said on social network Weibo. "It's not by betraying their duties that the air quality will improve." The acrid gray haze that regularly envelops Chinese cities has become a major focus of discontent in the country. To try to contain the problem, Beijing has imposed air pollution reduction targets on local officials, who are punished if they are not reached. The latest case "should serve as a warning to officials around the country that the central government is serious about punishing environmental abuses," said Dong Liansai, of the campaign group Greenpeace, in a statement. "Reliable data is the very starting point of China's 'war on pollution'" that Beijing declared in 2014, Dong said, adding that "citizens have a right to know about the quality of the air they breath".
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Dutch inventors Tuesday unveiled what they called the world's first giant outside air vacuum cleaner -- a large purifying system intended to filter out toxic tiny particles from the atmosphere surrounding the machine.
"It's a large industrial filter about eight metres (yards) long, made of steel... placed basically on top of buildings and it works like a big vacuum cleaner," said Henk Boersen, a spokesman for the Envinity Group which unveiled the system in Amsterdam.
The system is said to be able to suck in air from a 300-metre radius -- and from up to seven kilometres (over four miles) upwards. It can treat some 800,000 cubic metres of air an hour, filtering out 100 percent of fine particles and 95 percent percent of ultra-fine particles, the company said, referring to tests carried out by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) on its prototype.
"A large column of air will pass through the filter and come out clear," Boersen told AFP, speaking on the sidelines of a major two-day offshore energy conference in Amsterdam.
Fine particles are caused by emissions from burning wood and other fuels as well as industrial combustion, and have "adverse effects on health," according to the European Environment Agency.
About 90 percent of EU residents are exposed to levels of such particles -- which can be carcinogenic -- above those recommended by the World Health Organization.
As for ultra-fine particles, they are released by emissions from vehicles as well as aeroplanes, according to Envinity, and can "damage the nervous system, including brain cells, and also cause infections."
Governments, businesses and airports are already interested in the project, Boersen said.
Another air-purifying system called the "Smog Free Tower" was installed in Beijing last month and launched by the Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde.
Using patented ozone-free ion technology, it can clean up to 30,000 cubic metres of air an hour as it blows past the tower, collecting more than 75 percent of the harmful particles, Studio Roosegaarde said in a statement.
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