Some Beijing residents have expressed hopes the new air monitoring stations will be set up in areas that can truly reflect the capital's air quality.

"Hopefully the stations will not be located close to any water reservoirs or forest parks," said Beijing resident Wang Yu, 26. "That would simply be a waste of taxpayers' money."

Some non-governmental organizations on environmental protection also appealed to the government to set up stations where objective air quality can be provided.

"The monitoring station will turn into nothing but a decoration if it cannot objectively reflect an area's air pollution and contamination," said Wang Qiuxia, a researcher at Green Beagle, an environmental NGO based in the capital.

The Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau this year is setting up six of the more than 30 planned monitoring stations to measure PM 2.5, a harmful particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that can easily enter a person's lungs.

Yu Jianhua, director of the air pollution control division of the bureau, said the bureau would carefully choose the locations of the stations to represent the city's air condition comprehensively and objectively.

"The stations will be set up through all the 16 districts and counties in the city," said Yu.

"The stations should be located in representative areas, neither around the most clean nor the worst polluted areas," said Yu.

According to the national standard, the stations should be placed 50 meters from the pollution source, including automobile exhaust.

The US embassy's rooftop air quality monitor is only 15 meters from the road, which might detect a higher Air Pollution Index, said Yu.

The bureau plans to purchase facilities from home and abroad in the near future and step up the training of the inspection personnel, said the bureau.

The government also plans to add another 13,300 acres of wooded area in 2012, mainly in urban areas, and along freeways and arterial roads.

Tree planting, together with scrapping old and polluting automobiles, would greatly improve the city's air quality, said the bureau, and help the city reach the stricter standard of PM 2.5 concentration laid down by the Ministry of Environmental Protection at the end of last year.