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© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

In September 2018, China’s air quality monitoring protocol was amended from the standard conditions to actual conditions for particulate matter and to reference conditions for gaseous pollutants. Due to the amendment, the reported concentrations of the gaseous pollutants decreased by a constant rate of 8.4%, and the averages of PM2.5 (particulate matter that has an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 microns or smaller) reported during September 2017 and August 2018 decreased by 7.9 ± 6.1% at 99% of the monitoring stations. Comparing the periods before and after the amendment, the 12-month PM2.5 concentrations at 17.2% of the stations actually increased despite appearing to decrease if the amendments were not considered. We reviewed 370 papers published in 2020 that utilized this air quality dataset, and 21% of these papers used the data before and after the amendment without explicitly stating whether or how conversions were conducted. It is urgent to widely broadcast the protocol amendment to ensure proper use of this extensively cited dataset.

Details

Title
Impact of China’s Recent Amendments to Air Quality Monitoring Protocol on Reported Trends
Author
Jin, Lei 1 ; Wang, Bin 1 ; Shi, Guangming 1 ; Seyler, Barnabas C 1 ; Xue Qiao 2 ; Deng, Xunfei 3 ; Jiang, Xia 4 ; Yang, Fumo 4 ; Yu, Zhan 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China; [email protected] (L.J.); [email protected] (B.W.); [email protected] (G.S.); [email protected] (B.C.S.); [email protected] (X.J.); [email protected] (F.Y.) 
 Institute of New Energy and Low-Carbon Technology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China; [email protected] 
 Institute of Digital Agriculture, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, China; [email protected] 
 Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China; [email protected] (L.J.); [email protected] (B.W.); [email protected] (G.S.); [email protected] (B.C.S.); [email protected] (X.J.); [email protected] (F.Y.); National Engineering Research Center for Flue Gas Desulfurization, Chengdu 610065, China 
 Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China; [email protected] (L.J.); [email protected] (B.W.); [email protected] (G.S.); [email protected] (B.C.S.); [email protected] (X.J.); [email protected] (F.Y.); National Engineering Research Center for Flue Gas Desulfurization, Chengdu 610065, China; Yibin Institute of Industrial Technology, Sichuan University Yibin Park, Yibin 644000, China 
First page
1199
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20734433
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2524471841
Copyright
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.