BEIJING — Thick pollution blanketed the Chinese capital on Sunday — one of the smoggiest days seen in the past month — but a city environmental official pledged that the air quality would be “good” by the time the Beijing Olympics start in 12 days.
Despite tough traffic restrictions imposed a week ago to help reduce pollution. visibility was a half-mile in parts of the city.
At the opening of the Athletes’ Village on Sunday, the complex was invisible from the nearby main Olympic Green.
The city’s notoriously polluted air remains one of the biggest question marks hanging over the games, which begin Aug. 8.
“The air quality in August will be good,” Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters Sunday.
Du blamed the thick haze on a combination of fog and light wind unable to blow away the pollution, but he said pollution levels now are 20 percent lower than one year ago in similar weather conditions. He did not provide any details.
“Our job is to decrease the pollution as much as possible, but sometimes it is very common to have fog in Beijing at this time,” Du said.
Olympic athletes have been trickling into Beijing, but are expected to begin arriving in larger numbers this week. Some, though, were headed to training sites in South Korea, Japan and other places to avoid the Beijing air until the last possible minute.
“No, it doesn’t really look so good, but as I said, yesterday was better, said Gunilla Lindberg, an International Olympic Committee vice president from Sweden who is staying in the Athletes’ Village. “The day I arrived, Tuesday, was awful.” “We try to be hopeful. Hopefully we are lucky during the games as we were with Atlanta, Athens and Barcelona,” she added.
Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, has warned that outdoor endurance events will be postponed if the air quality is poor.
Drastic efforts to curb pollution include pulling half of Beijing’s 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, closing factories in the city and in a half dozen surrounding provinces, and halting most construction in the capital. Some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles, such as aging industrial trucks, have been banned since July 1.
Experts have said that while the measures are sure to reduce pollution, they are not a guarantee for blue skies during the games. Wind can blow pollution to Beijing from thousands of miles away, while a lack of wind can cause chemicals and particulate matter to build up in the city.
“There’s only so much you can do with local emission reduction,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. He is leading a team that is studying the impact of Beijing’s pollution reduction measures.
“You’re basically at the mercy of the winds,” he said.
