Taiwan’s Station Monitoring Foreign Pollutants Spurs International Cooperation

TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A station, which was inaugurated by Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in 2006 to monitor air pollutants drifted from other countries, has made it possible for the EPA to cooperate with international agencies.

The EPA, which had already set up more than 76 monitoring stations nationwide, built the Lulin Atmospheric Background Station (LABS) in a bid to enhance the efficiency of keeping track of the long-range transmission of foreign pollutants and measuring their impact on Taiwan.

In recent years, the station’s analyses of sand storms in China, atmospheric brown clouds and atmospheric mercury have won recognition from international scientists, according to Dr. Chu Yu-chi, director-general of the Environmental Monitoring and Information Management unit.

The station is based on the top of Mt. Lulin in central Taiwan at the height of 2,826 meters, which allows the station to avoid regional air pollutants, Chu explained.

Since its inauguration in April 2006, the station has been involved with the United Nations’ Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABC) research program and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Biomass-burning Aerosols in South East-Asia: Smoke Impact Assessment (BASE-ASIA) project, Chu said.

In addition, the EPA has organized three international seminars so far, with participants coming from Japan, South Korea, the United States, the European Union, Italy, Switzerland, India, Kenya and China.

At the seminars, the experts had in-depth discussions and exchanged views on the long-range transmission, data analysis, machine operations and equipment maintenance, according to Chu.

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