Source: Nanfang Daily 12/04/2012 Section GC02

Author: Yan Lei

Yesterday, the First “Asia Academic Seminar on Health Influence of Air Quality and Climate” was held in the Geography and Environment Building in the South Campus of Sun Yat-sen University. The seminar was co-organized by School of Environmental Science and Engineering of SYSU and US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. Nearly 70 top experts in the world participated in the seminar, the content of which included edge-cutting disciplines like Meteorology, Public Health, Environmentology, Atmospheric Chemistry, etc.

During the meeting, Doc. Long Shijun from Taiwan declared that the emission of PM2.5 around pollutant sources in communities like restaurants was ten times more than that in ordinary locations, a phenomenon worthy of more attention.

"Similar community pollutant sources are widespread in Guangzhou too. After all, we are from the cultural systems of the same origin,” said Doc. Long. He also suggested that Guangzhou should take some precautionary measures to control these pollutant sources.

Presently, there are 10 state-owned outdoor monitoring points for PM2.5. So is there any possibility of building an indoor monitoring point for PM2.5 in Guangdong or Guangzhou in the future? A director from Guangdong Environmental Monitoring Center answered to this question, saying that even if Guangdong was going to build dozens of new monitory points, they would be outdoor ones, because "there are no reference standards for indoor points so far.”