Beijing residents awoke on Saturday to dense, choking smog after many set off a barrage of fireworks overnight to ring in the Lunar New Year, despite limits and public admonitions against such displays in the congested city. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said harmful particulate matter in the air had hit the second highest level in five years by Saturday morning, China News Service reported. Beijing launched a “war against pollution” in 2014 as part of a central government promise to reverse damage done by decades of breakneck growth and strengthen powers to shut down and punish polluters. “In setting off fireworks, be conscious of ‘setting off the [pollution] index’,” read an editorial in newspaper, the Communist Party mouthpiece. In Beijing, efforts to ease smog included neighbourhood postings asking residents not to light fireworks, fewer approvals for firework stalls and officials being warned to lead by example and abstain from the pyrotechnics.
