Beijing denies fiddling air pollution figures
Beijing officials on Wednesday denied a report by a U.S. environmental expert alleging they have been fiddling with figures to make it look as if the city's air pollution is falling ahead of the Olympic Games. Environmental consultant Steven Andrews wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month that after studying the statistics he found that scientists have stopped including data from two of the more heavily polluted monitoring stations in the city and that the criteria for judging the level of smog was changed two years ago. Andrews said that without these changes, Beijing would have fallen far short of its targets for reducing pollution levels in 2006 and 2007.