More than 4,000 companies were blacklisted for their bad record of air pollution in a public database released in Beijing on Thursday.

The database, named China Air Pollution Map (http://air.ipe.org.cn), blacklisted more than 4,000 companies, including subsidiaries of Sinopec and Sina-Mars Group APP in China, the China Youth Daily reported.

"The database collects the bad records of polluters since 2004," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPEA), a non-governmental organization, which sponsored the database.

Citing the case of APP as an example, Ma said a governmental environmental protection department made two special inspections at the APP's Hainan subsidiary and the company was fined 50,000 yuan (US$6,756) for excessive waste air discharge in 2006.

He said all the information about the polluters is from the official websites of local and central environmental protection departments or from news reports of government releases.

Ma expressed his hope that the database will pressure polluters to make improvements and encourage more of the public to join in the supervision of existing and would-be polluters so as to protect the environment.

Besides the polluters' information, the database also provides air quality, sources of air pollution and waste air discharge in 150 cities in southern China from 2004, Ma said.

Ma said this is only the first part of the air map and more information about northern China will be added later. He also said the information about the companies will be updated based on latest government notices or news releases.

In September, 2006, the IPEA launched China's first public database on water pollution in an effort to prevent further deterioration of the country's water quality.

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)