A government proposal for a tighter system of monitoring pollution nationwide, including using the "PM 2.5" measure of microscopic airborne particles, has won support from a majority of the Chinese public, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement Wednesday.

The ministry published a draft of the revised Environmental Air Quality Standards on November 16 and solicited public feedback on it till Monday.

More than 1,500 comments from the public have been received and most of them support the PM 2.5 measure of airborne particular matter under 2.5 micrometers in size, the statement said.

The public also urged the government to publish the air-quality monitoring data in a more timely manner, it said.

China currently uses PM 10, which gauges particular matter under 10 micrometers, to measure air quality, but there has been a growing public movement to persuade the government to apply the tighter PM 2.5 standard, which measures finer matter considered more hazardous to people's health as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs.

Public discontent was fueled by discrepancy between the government's official data and the U.S. Embassy's measurements, after an incident where the U.S. Embassy in Beijing rated the air as "hazardous," while the city's Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said the pollution was "slight."

The measuring of PM 2.5 and ozone density, two more effective gauges of smoggy conditions included in the draft standard, are in line with the revised World Health Organization air-quality guidelines, and the new gauges will make the air-quality data in better conformity with the public's observations, Wu Xuefang, director of the ministry's Institute of Environmental Standards, was quoted by the People's Daily as saying.

The rapid growth of the Chinese economy has brought about more air pollution, but the current air-quality rating standard, which remains unchanged for more than 10 years, lags behind the changes, Wu said.

The current standard was first formulated and launched in 1982 and revised in 1996 and 2000.

Soaring energy consumption and the growing number of motor vehicles in use in recent years have caused a remarkable rise in nitrogen oxide emissions, volatile organic compounds, ozone and particular pollutants in the air, but the changes are not picked up by the current gauges, Wu said.

According to the draft, the new index standard is scheduled to be fully implemented nationwide in 2016, and the central government may designate certain regions to adopt it ahead of the national deadline.