Regulators in China's most air polluted regions including Beijing, North China's Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province will impose stricter limits this year on the production of iron and steel, chemicals and medicine to curb air pollution, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Tuesday.
Iron and steel mills in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and its neighbors, where the pollution gauged by local air quality indexes has frequently gone off the scale, will be subject to tighter production restrictions, the report said, citing an internal draft of the government's air pollution prevention plan for 2017.
According to the draft, electrolytic aluminum and chemical factories will be required to shift production to avoid peak times of production, the report said. Pesticide and medicine manufacturers should also halt production in the winter, though local authorities can grant exceptions.
Transporting coal from the port of Tianjin will also be banned by the end of July, the report said. Instead coal must be transported via the Tang Zhang Railway, which connects to Tangshan port in Hebei.
By the end of September, coal in Tianjin and Hebei will all be transported by railway. Diesel trains will be prohibited from carrying the coal, according to the report.
