Local officials need more environmental awareness

The environmental inspection teams sent by the central authorities to oversee the anti-pollution efforts of the local governments in Tianjin and five provinces, including Anhui, Shanxi and Liaoning, have described the situations they found as "shocking".

In Tianjin, where petrochemical industries thrive, air pollution worsened in the first quarter of this year, with the intensity of PM2.5 - particulate matter with diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers that can penetrate deep into people's lungs - increasing by 28 percent year-on-year.

In Anhui province, 740,000 square meters of wetland surrounding its biggest lake, Chaohu, have been turned into an industrial waste dump, and the worsening water quality resulted in more than 30 percent of the lake being covered in algae last year.