Monitoring indicated that air in 45 Chinese cities was polluted during the first half year, according to the latest semi-annual report on air quality in 113 cities released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Among the 45 cities are the national capital Beijing, provincial capital cities of Nanjing, Changchun, Hefei, Jinan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an, Lanzhou, and energy industrial cities like Tangshan, Taiyuan, Baotou, Anshan and Benxi. In the remaining 68 cities, or 60.2 percent of the total 113 cities monitored, the air quality was fairly good or excellent during the January to June period, Xinhua quoted the ministry report as saying. According to the report, the average concentration of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter in the 113 cities, was 0.044 mg, 0.037 mg and 0.091 mg per square meter, respectively, during the first six months of 2011. That means a decrease of 2.2 percent in the average concentration of sulfur dioxide and an increase of 5.7 percent in that of nitrogen dioxide, compared to the same period of last year, with that of particulate matter remaining almost unchanged.
