The Chinese province of Fujian has inaugurated the first "clean air index", which aims to evaluate the air quality around individual natural attractions, thus creating a constantly updated map of the most environmentally attractive locations. The novelty lies in the fact that while the existing indices focus mainly on city air, often creating alarm due to the massive presence of dust or toxic substances, the new index is designed to analyze the purest air, enhancing the places where breathe better air.
"Our goal," says Chen Yihui, an official of the provincial tourism bureau, "is to increase eco-tourism, making the places with the purest air advertise themselves." During a press conference, Zhu Hua, director of the provincial tourism bureau, said the clean air index will be applied to 50 tourist attractions in the province. The air quality data will be published on the Office's website, where visitors will be able to download it and discuss it in related blogs and chats.
To give some examples, the Yongtai Yunding Mountain in the city of Fuzhou registers 100.000 negative oxygen ions per square centimeter, while the Da'anyuan viewpoint on Wuyi Mountain registers 80.000. The presence of negative oxygen ions is an important indicator of the healthiness of the air: it can therefore be said that in these places the atmosphere is particularly pure and healthy. Not only that, these data far exceed the standard set by the World Health Organization to define clean air, since, for negative ions, the reference level ranges from 1.000 to 1500 ions per square centimetre.
The index also detects the presence of PM 2,5 (fine particulate matter, dust with a diameter of 2,5 µm, which is particularly harmful because it is able to penetrate deep into the lungs) and by consulting the Provincial Tourist Office website one becomes aware that the Yuhua Karst Cave in Jiangle county has a particulate matter rate close to zero, while levels of just under 500 have been recorded in Beijing this year.
