At least five environmental officials in China's northern city of Xi'an have been detained for tampering air quality monitoring equipment and falsifying results to avoid being fined, state-backed Xinhua News agency reported.

The report was confirmed by the Xi'an Environment Protection Bureau, saying that local monitoring station personnel were found stuffing sensors with cotton to lower emission readings. A bureau official allegedly reported the anomaly to officials on Friday.

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Investigation revealed that aside from stuffing cotton gauze, the surveillance videos since March have also been deleted to cover the deception, the Straits Times reported.

The deception was allegedly carried out as Li Sen, head of the monitoring station, made a copy of a key and held onto computer password that have access to the station while it was being relocated to the Xi'an University of Posts and Telecommunications last February, the Global Times reported.

The unauthorized access allowed employees to enter the station and block the samplers that altered the sampling system and resulted to data exceptions. It also disrupted the normal function of the national air quality monitoring system, Global Times reported citing the China Business View.

The alteration to the system's data triggered an alert to the National Environmental Monitoring Center, which immediately dispatched inspectors to investigate the station.

 A source said the officials manipulated results to make the data "look better" and avoid being penalized since environmental protection officials oversee factories with high pollution levels and are responsible for shutting them down.

Meanwhile, an official from the Shaanxi Provincial Environmental Protection Department said the government will implement measures to prevent the issue from recurring again. For instance, it will install a long-distance surveillance system that will alarm if data exceptions are detected and carry out surprise inspections for the stations.

TagsMinistry of Environmental Protection, air quality, air pollution, china air quality, National Environmental Monitoring Center, Fraud