Construction will be suspended in Beijing during the winter heating season in an effort to improve the city's air quality, the Beijing Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced on Sept 16.

Work on construction sites, including demolition and outdoor earthwork, which may generate dust, will be suspended from Nov 15 until March 15, the entire heating season.

The announcement of the ban follows the release by the capital of its fifth emergency response protocols for air pollution on Sept 14, increasing manufacturing restrictions amid other strict controls to tackle air pollution.

Compared with the previous four versions, released since 2012, the latest protocols reflect the trend toward tighter controls on polluters - for example, for the first time some construction work, such as spraying and painting, will now be banned when the lowest level air pollution alert, blue, is issued. These are the first compulsory measures for blue alerts.

In Beijing and other Chinese cities, the air pollution emergency response system has four levels, from blue - the lowest - then yellow, orange and red. Each generates a set of responses, such as school suspensions or restrictions on manufacturing or vehicles.

The revised protocols restrict production at some plants during yellow alerts to cut airborne pollutant emissions. Such restrictions previously began with orange alerts.

The emergency response system has been posted on the municipal government's website and took effect on Sept 14.

The criteria for red alerts have been reduced to a forecast of an average air quality index of 500 in a day. Previously, that level had to continue for at least one more day.

Red alerts generate the strictest controls. During the red alert issued in Beijing on Dec 16, which continued for five days, production was stopped at more than 700 plants and reduced at some 500 others. More than half the vehicles in the city were barred from the roads.

"The tough controls to cut emissions proved workable in lowering the peak of the pollution," says Chai Fahe, a researcher at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, adding that they cut the emissions by more than 30 percent.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has required joint controls, including coordinated emergency responses against air pollution, in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in winter.

By the end of the year, the concentration of PM2.5 - particulates with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns - should be lowered to 60 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the city's Bureau of Environmental Protection.

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(China Daily European Weekly 09/22/2017 page14)