China Finds Way To Improve Air Quality Readings - Stuff Cotton Into Air-Sampling Apparatus - NYT
The scheme was simple: Stuff cotton into air-monitoring equipment so that the air being read would be filtered and seem cleaner.
The people doing this to produce better — but false — air-quality readings in Xi’an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi, got away with it for months, until inspectors noticed irregularities in the data. An investigation resulted in the head of the air-monitoring station in the city’s Chang’an district and several members of his staff being caught, according to a report by Chinese Business View, a newspaper in Shaanxi. Five people have been detained, including He Limin, chief of the Chang’an branch of the Xi’an Environmental Protection Bureau.
The report was widely reprinted online and discussed by internet users this week in China, and it raised questions about the accuracy of air-quality data gathered in scores of cities across the country. In January 2013, China began releasing real-time air-quality data from 74 cities and 496 air-monitoring stations. Since then, many more cities have been added to the system, overseen by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
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The plot in Xi’an began when the station moved in February. At the time, the station chief, Li Sen, used the move to secretly copy the key to the station and a password for the station’s computer. Shortly after that, station employees sneaked into the station multiple times and stuffed cotton into the sensors, “resulting in abnormal data and affecting the normal operation of the national air-quality automatic monitoring system,” according to Chinese Business View. The report said that station employees deleted surveillance camera video in March to ensure that inspectors would not see their actions. As of Friday afternoon, neither the Xi’an Environmental Protection Bureau nor the Ministry of Environmental Protection had responded to faxed requests for comment sent this week.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/world/asia/china-xian-air-pollution-data.html?mtrref=undefined&_r=0