CHINA:Chinese environmental monitors have come up with an unusual way of tracking down the growing army of polluters fouling the water and sky. It's a dirty job, though not one to be sniffed at, and you really need a nose for it.
An environmental monitoring station in the booming southern province of Guangdong is recruiting people with keen noses to sniff out foul gases in the atmosphere and provide more accurate readings of air quality.
A team of 11 "professional noses" at a monitoring station in Panyu, an industrial town in the Pearl river delta in Guangdong, has been trained by air pollution experts to become olfactory watchdogs in China's battle to combat polluters, an official at the station told the China Daily newspaper.
"Now we can differentiate between hundreds of smells that may make people ill before making an assessment on their density," said vice-director Liu Jingcai. "The work is quite unpleasant. We have to stay in a lab smelling those awful gases repeatedly."
With the Olympic Games due to take place in Beijing in August next year, resolving China's pollution problem is becoming one of the biggest challenges for the government. The Pearl river delta is where much of China's industrial growth is centred, and is home to factory towns such as Shenzhen and Dongguan, where thousands of plants produce cheap goods.