Environmental monitoring equipment technical standards will be drafted

With the continuous automatic monitoring of PM10 and PM2.5 in our cities, a schedule was put forward. Some key cities in China have also started to publish monitoring information for PM2.5, but the standards and specifications for monitoring methods that they support cannot meet the requirements. The Ministry of Environmental Protection stated that the main problem lies in the lack of technical requirements for instrument suitability testing.

Therefore, the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently released six national environmental protection standards to regulate monitoring including PM2.5. These six standards include "Technical Requirements and Test Methods for Continuous Air Monitoring System (PM10 and PM2.5) for Environmental Air PM (Trial)" (hereinafter referred to as "Test Method"). At present, public comment has begun.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection Science and Technology Department responsible for the formulation of these six standards stated that the performance of PM10 and PM2.5 monitoring instruments directly determines the final quality of the monitoring data from the source. “The new ambient air quality standards released this year directly put the continuous automatic monitoring of PM10 and PM2.5 on the schedule, and there are currently no relevant standards for the technical requirements of the continuous automatic monitoring system for PM2.5.” said the Ministry of Environmental Protection In order to serve the continuous automatic monitoring of ambient air PM10 and PM2.5 in China, in particular to regulate the technical requirements and performance of PM10 and PM2.5 continuous automatic monitoring systems, to meet the urgent needs of the current environmental monitoring technology and management, special preparation testing method.

According to the drafters of the standard, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has made reference to the relevant standards of the United States, the European Union, and Japan when formulating test methods. "However, domestic concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 is much higher in some regions or at certain time spans than in other countries. Therefore, the use of relevant indicators in foreign countries cannot be fully applied to the country," the drafters said.