BEIJING (AFP) - Nearly all of China's fast-rising number of skyscrapers are filled with excessive air pollutants that could cause serious harm to office workers, state press said.

In the capital of Beijing, 81 percent of the buildings tested by the National Interior Decoration Association last year had excessive levels of ammonia, the China Daily reported.

Half of the buildings also contained unsafe levels of ozone and 42 percent were polluted with formaldehyde, all of which can cause severe health conditions such as asthma and Legionnaires' disease, according to the paper.

In Shenzhen, the richest city in southern China, the local authority for disease prevention and control carried out similar tests last year and found more than 90 per cent of the offices had excessive air pollutants.

In Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, 89.8 percent of 572 new and remodelled offices contained high levels of air pollutants, with some having ammonia levels 18 times above safety standards, the paper said.

"If you scan every office building against the official indoor air quality standard, you can rarely find one that is fully qualified," the paper quoted the decoration association's director of indoor environment testing, Song Guangsheng, as saying.

Construction and decoration materials, furniture, electronic apparatuses and poor ventilation all contribute to the air pollution, according to Song.

The report indicated the situation for China's growing number of office workers had not improved from 2003, when the government established indoor air quality standards.

Government statistics released then said as many as 111,000 people died of indoor pollution annually in China.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060221/sc_afp/chinaenvironment_060221172400