Bus fumes in the black books in Shanghai

One of the city's worst pollution blights is being tackled head-on - and much cleaner air is on the horizon.

More than a third of local buses will be upgraded this year to lessen the emission of overwhelming black fumes, city official told Shanghai Daily on Friday.

Several government departments, including the city's transport and environmental authorities, will work together to supervise the upgrade. Street monitors will also be employed. "We will work shoulder to shoulder," Su Guodong, director of the pollution control department of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau, said on Friday.

He said the city government will support the technical upgrade of about 7,000 buses - the total number used for public transport within the Inner Ring Road - by year's end.

It also plans to gradually improve the buses served within the Outer Ring Road as the anti-black-fume battle has a high priority.

The upgrade, which involves replacement or maintenance of engines and other pollution-causing devices, will be conducted by bus-operation companies that will receive a subsidy from the municipal government.

The amount of that subsidy is not known.

Shanghai has more than 20,000 public transport buses and most of them are diesel-powered, according to the city's transport management bureau. About half of them have been in use for more than three years.

Most were made by the Shanghai Sunwin Bus Corporation - a joint venture of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and the Swedish-based Volvo Bus Corporation.

"The upgrade should have been done much, much earlier," Chen Youkou, a senior bus engineer of the government-backed Modern Transport Construction Company, said.

"Many buses look beautiful but emit disease-causing black fumes."

He said buses have to undergo regular maintenance and every three years must have a comprehensive check-up, including replacement of key equipment.

However, many domestic components cause the diesel to burn insufficiently. This causes the black fume emission.

The fumes include cancer-causing chemicals such as nitrogenous dioxide, sulfur dioxide and lead.