The world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, said he still intended to participate in the 10,000 meters but could not run in the 26-mile, 385-yard (42.2km) marathon.

Gebrselassie, 34, who holds the world marathon record and two Olympic titles for the 10,000 meters, suffers from asthma.

He said, ‘The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42km. But I am not pulling out of the Olympic event in Beijing altogether. I plan to participate in the 10,000-metre event.’

China has spent more than $16 billion on measures to improve air quality in Beijing with, so far, little tangible success. Factories have been closed or moved and millions of cars have been taken off the city’s notoriously congested roads in the past 12 months.

A report by the United Nations in October revealed that there still might not be enough time to clear pollutants for the Games, which begin in August.

Many athletes who suffer from asthma have won Olympic medals. The condition is no bar to sporting success.
The British marathon runner Paula Radcliffe was diagnosed with asthma at 14 and keeps the condition under control with medication. Paul Scholes, the England footballer, found out he had asthma at the age of 21. But gulping in large volumes of polluted air in Beijing will challenge even the healthiest lungs.

The International Olympic Committee is concerned at the rise in athletes claiming to be asthmatic — from 9% in the 1980s to 21% at the 2000 Olympics. It will insist the correct tests are carried out and the proper forms filled in before granting permission for athletes to use asthma drugs.
Source: Belfast Telegraph

Car owners forced off the road to reduce pollution during August’s Beijing Olympics will be compensated.

Beijing plans to take as many as half of its 3.3 million vehicles off the roads during the Games to help cut emissions.

Beijing vice mayor Ji Lin said, ‘Automobiles, excluding taxis, buses and emergency vehicles, are to stay off roads every other day in accordance with the even and odd numbers on the licence plates. The ban is aimed to ensure air quality during the sports events in Beijing.’

Ji Lin said there would be compensation but the exact levels were still being discussed.

Beijing, one of the most polluted cities in the world, held a four-day test of similar restrictions in August last year.

Despite huge efforts to improve the environment over the last decade, air quality remains one of the biggest problems facing organisers in the run-up to the Olympics.

Olympic chief Jacques Rogge said last year that some endurance events would have to be rescheduled if air quality could not be guaranteed.

Plans to reduce pollutants during the Olympics also involve cutting emissions at power plants and factories in Beijing and five surrounding provinces.

Full details of the contingency plans have yet to be announced, but another Beijing vice mayor, Liu Jingmin, said earlier this week that measures should not be too disruptive to the city’s economy of the lives of the people.
Source: The Guardian

Qinhuangdao, the port city in north China’s Hebei province, is going all out to help ensure blue skies as a co-host of this summer’s Olympic Games. The local environmental protection bureau said that Qinhuangdao, 280 kilometers east of Beijing, has invested RMB20 billion (about $2.78 billion) in a major environmental protection drive with the aim to improve air quality for the August Olympics.

This includes 2,00 projects featuring air pollution control, industrial sewage recycling, city garbage treatment, development of environmentally-friendly tourism, water sources protection and afforestation.

The government ordered all desulfurization projects at major coal-fired power plants to be completed before July 1.

Local chemical plants and iron mines are now required to cut pollutants that might darken the Olympic skies and water. In addition, the city has set up an air-quality monitoring network focused on heavily-polluting businesses.

Ji Zhenhai, the provincial environmental protection bureau director said Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing and Tianjin, has also pledged to spend about RMB21 billion on anti-pollution projects and environmental monitoring stations.

Businesses in heavily-polluting industries — power, iron and steel, chemicals and concrete — will have to cut production or even close if they fail to meet the emission standard during the Games.
Source: China View

The Beijing Olympics may be a time to slow down smoking, a habit that kills about a million people in China every year.

China has about 360 million smokers, which is 26% of its population and a third of the global total. Financially the nation is partially dependent on the tobacco industry for huge tax revenues.

It is not considered socially unacceptable to smoke. Even top Chinese athletes such as Liu Xiang, world and Olympic champion in the 110m high hurdles, advertises for Chinese tobacco company Baishan, while some football and basketball professionals still enjoy a smoke at half-time.

In most other countries of the world smoking is realized to be pretty evil and is banned most places. Possibly the tobacco companies have though they could outsource smoking to China. This may be changing.

Communications expert Ren Mengshan is openly advocating the Olympics as ‘a good platform for the government to promote non-smoking and the benefits of good health.’
Besides declaring the Beijing Olympics ’smoke-free,’ organizers have also banned tobacco from public places where athletes and Olympic officials are likely to meet.

The capital has further mandated that 70% of all hotel rooms be non-smoking and since October last year, has banned taxi drivers from smoking in their cars.

In addition to its recent efforts, since 1996 Beijing authorities have tried to ban smoking in public places such as restaurants, schools, hospitals, train and bus stations, libraries and museums.

Although their efforts have met with little success, there are glimmers of hope.

Beijing’s first non-smoking eatery, the Meizhou Dongpo, opened in the capital in October last year. Tables in the Sichuan-style eatery are decorated with signs that read ‘no-smoking restaurant, a forest in the middle of the city.’
Source: Times of India

China will shut coal-fired power plants, cement factories and chemical manufacturers near Beijing to reduce pollution before the Olympic Games in August.

Operators of these sites have been told they will be closed 30 days before the Olympics begin on August 8.

Ten ‘major polluters’ have already been shut and more than 15,000 old buses and taxis in both Beijing and Tianjin have been taken off the road the State Environmental Protection Administration said in a statement on its Web site.

Zhou Xizeng, an equity analyst who covers steel companies at Citic Securities in Beijing, said, ‘The Olympics are the main theme this year so all the companies will go in line with the government’s directives on the environment. Summer is a good time to cut supply because it isn’t a peak season traditionally.’

The South China Morning Post reported February 5 that Haile Gebrselassie, the men’s marathon world record holder and shown here, said that while he will attend the Games, he may pull out at the starting line if conditions aren’t safe enough. He is quoted as saying, ‘If pollution is a serious problem I will not run.’ In fairness he already has respiratory problems so that would be prudent.
Source: Bloomberg