Curb pollutant sources to give blue skies

The blue skies Beijing enjoyed during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November were followed by dense haze, suggesting that China's efforts to reduce air pollution cannot succeed at one go.

Long-time exposure to haze can harm people's respiratory tract, lungs and cardiovascular system. If measures to control air pollution fail to achieve substantive results, the effects could be very harmful to human health in next 10 to 20 years.

The causes of the heavy haze are known. Unfavorable meteorological diffusion and excessive source emission of pollutants are what cause heavy haze. People can hardly change the meteorological conditions because they are natural factors. Haze means absence of wind which makes it impossible to "blow away" the pollutant cover blocking the sky, which, in turn, means there's only one way of reducing haze, that is mitigating pollution sources.