A motorist wears a face mask while riding a scooter on a polluted day in Beijing on Nov 14, 2018. Major Chinese cities saw worsening air quality in January, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. (WANG ZHAO / AFP)

BEIJING - Major Chinese cities saw worsening air quality in January, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE).

The share of average good air quality days for China's 337 cities monitored by the ministry stood at 67.6 percent for the first month of this year, down 3.5 percentage points year on year.

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The average densities of major pollutants of PM 2.5 and PM 10 rose 8.2 percent and 5.4 percent year on year, respectively.

Of the 168 cities, Linfen - a city in north China's major coal producer Shanxi province reported the worst air quality, while the one at Tibet autonomous region's capital Lhasa was the best.

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The share of good air quality days for Beijing dropped 6.5 percentage points year on year, the MEE data showed.