Australian Olympics Team Charges Chinese Government Not Releasing Beijing Pollution Data

[hatrack]

SYDNEY, Australia - Chinese organizers have been reluctant to release the findings of air pollution tests conducted 12 months out from next year's Summer Games, medical advisers to Australia's Olympic team said Monday.

Chinese authorities took air quality readings at Beijing in August when a number of pollution-reduction measures were in place, including the removal of about 1.3 million of the city's three million cars from the road.

Australian sports officials have flagged Beijing's notorious smog as a major potential factor that could affect the performance of athletes at the 2008 Olympics.

Australian sports physician Dr. Ken Fitch questioned Chinese claims that the measures resulted in a 15-20 per cent reduction in air pollution. "I find it difficult to see that level in reduction in pollution as claimed," Fitch told an Olympic health and medical forum in Sydney on Monday. Fitch said outside analysts had made repeated requests for details of small particle and ozone levels - crucial for asthma sufferers - and associated data like how pollution varies through the day, but these had not been forthcoming.

EDIT

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2007/10/25/4604457-cp.html

[kestrel91316]

1. I expect to hear any day now about betting pools for the

day and time of the first Olympic athlete to die in competition in Bejing, and the total number of athletes to die. Of the air pollution.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. And the idiotic Chinese government is actually encouraging people to buy cars

The city of Beijing is flat and gets very little rain. People got along fine for years cycling around town and were healthier for it.

Instead of encouraging, say, the use of electric bicycles and other electric vehicles, the Chinese government has been promoting the use of cars and building freeways around Beijing. Bicycles are even banned from some thoroughfares.

I was there for two weeks in 1990. When I see pictures of present-day Beijing, I don't recognize the place.

[XemaSab]

3. Then again

Can't you say the same thing about LA, Phoenix, or a dozen other American cities?

I don't know that we can throw stones here...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Yes, but China had a chance to be different and the negative examples of

LA and Phoenix to look it, and it STILL went the car-oriented route.

Back when LA (and Minneapolis a few years later) allowed its streetcar system to be dismantled, we didn't have much awareness of air pollution or global warming.