Beijing says pollution lessened in 2015 despite smog alerts

Environmental authorities in Beijing say the Chinese capital's air quality in 2015 was better than the year before, despite the city's first two red alerts for pollution late in the year.

China has been setting national and local targets to reduce its notorious air pollution as citizens have become increasingly aware of the health dangers.

Beijing's municipal government has been replacing coal-fired boilers with natural gas-powered facilities, forcing older, more polluting vehicles off the road, and closing or moving factories that are heavy polluters.

Beijing's municipal environmental protection bureau said Monday that the average concentration of dangerous PM2.5 particles was 81 micrograms per cubic meter in 2015. That was a drop of 6 percent from 2014, and 10 percent lower than 2013, when Beijing started publishing data on PM2.