Shanghai plans to carry out online monitoring of pollutants from chimneys in 30 factories by the year's end, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday.

The bureau will install monitoring devices in chimneys that will automatically record the density of pollution-causing particles and send the information to the bureau.

"The new devices will help us monitor the air pollution more efficiently," Su Guodong, head of the bureau's pollution control section, said yesterday.

Similar devices have already been installed around the city's major industrial plants to monitor the pollutants in sewage, which send data back to the bureau every few minutes. The information can also be monitored through cell phones.

So far, three monitors have been installed in the Michelin tire factory in Minhang District.

By the year's end, more than 30 factories, including the Waigaoqiao Power Plant in Pudong, will have the monitors installed.

When all the equipment is in place, the monitoring will begin, officials said.

Factories with emissions that fail to meet the environmental standard will receive a warning at first, and may be deprived of their production licenses by 2010.

Early this month, Shanghai announced it will cut emissions from local industrial boilers by up to 90 percent over the next three years.

Local factories and power plants need to upgrade their boilers in the next three years so that their emissions, such as sulfur dioxide, meet the new standards.

Boiler emissions are a major air pollutant and also a potential cause of acid rain - air pollution created when oxides of sulfur and nitrogen combine with moisture.

Overall, Shanghai plans to reduce its industrial emissions by 27 percent from 2006 to 2010. This year's reduction target is two percent, double that of last year.