Smog Still Chokes Olympic City

July 31, 2007 — As the clock ticks towards one year out from the Beijing Olympic Games, a thick blanket of haze wedged over the capital for several weeks is casting a polluted shadow over countdown celebrations.

International Olympic Committee officials have repeatedly warned that bad air quality is one of the biggest threats to the success of the 2008 Games, and authorities are working overtime to ensure blue skies during the event.

The government will next week take one million cars off the city's roads for a fortnight to test-run one of its most important tactics in engineering a sudden, temporary lifting of the pollution for Olympic athletes and visitors.

Building work will also be restricted next year, artificial rain may be induced to clear the air, and many of Beijing's biggest polluting factories will by then have been moved out of the capital.

But the pollution haze that has been hanging over Beijing for weeks ahead of next week's August 8 one-year countdown illustrates the enormity of tackling the problem.

Similar atmospheric conditions are likely to prevail during the summer Games and a buildup of pollution could be hard to avert, said Kenneth Rahn, a professor at the University of Rhode Island's Centre for atmospheric chemistry studies.

"The authorities will try to deal with the pollution by restricting as many activities as possible in Beijing during the Games," Rahn told AFP.

"This will help, but no one knows whether it will be enough."

Although the staggering growth in the number of cars — 1,200 vehicles are added daily — is often blamed for the city's pollution woes, Rahn and others warned simply taking some of them off the road during the Games was no panacea.