Taipei Times
Date: Dec 28, 2018
By: Staff writer, with CNA
Red air-quality alerts, which signal “severe” air pollution, were issued 282 times this
Smog obscures buildings in Kaohsiung on Sunday.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
year as of Dec. 16, beating a target of at most 499, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
Preliminary data on the nation’s air quality from Jan. 1 to Dec. 16 showed that the agency had reached its 2015 goal of halving red air-quality alerts earlier than expected, it said.
The goal was to reduce the frequency of red alerts from 997 to 449 per year, Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management Director-General Chang Shuenn-chin (張順欽) said.
The goal for this year is to see fewer than 698 red alerts, but data so far show that the goal of halving 997 was reached earlier than expected, Chang said.
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