Air pollution violations from Chinese factories made public in new app
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(NaturalNews) A new smart phone app was recently developed to enable anyone to not only view complete air quality readings but directly determine air pollution culprits. Surprisingly, it was developed in China for Chinese citizens. And it doesn't target cars and wood- or coal-burning chimneys; it targets industrial sources.
There are 15,000 factories sprawled across vast mainland China that are now required by the Environmental Ministry to submit real-time air emission reports to provincial environmental officials. Although required to make the data public, not all provinces feature the information on their websites.
This new app, launched June 9, 2014, enables anyone to see what's going on with air quality anywhere in China on an hourly reporting basis. The network, created by the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, permits one to use his or her own smart phone to not only get air quality reports in 190 different cities, but see which factories are violating pollution restrictions.
By connecting to the GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite system, which many use for directions in vehicles or on smart phones, each city can be viewed with the positions of all the factories or industries in that area.
The factories or industries are color-coded, with red indicating a transgression of the national air quality pollution limits. This system also provides a centralized data base for the Environmental Ministry.