Swiss researchers identify sources of smog in Beijing

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have identified the origin of air pollutants in the Chinese capital in an international study. The sources of smog differ from summer to winter, they found. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox According to estimates from studies, air pollution leads to several million deaths worldwide every year, the PSI said on Thursday. Yet it is often a challenge to localise the sources of pollutants. An international research team from the PSI, the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) and the University of Helsinki has now succeeded in determining the origin of the smog in the Beijing metropolitan area more precisely. To do this, they used a new, mobile aerosol mass spectrometer. This was set up on a university roof in Beijing, where it analysed the molecular composition of the particulate matter in the outside air in real time. This made it possible to understand smog, its sources and its formation in ...