Eight company employees have been detained on suspicion of polluting the environment by falsifying monitoring data, Beijing police said on Thursday.

In a statement, the Beijing Public Security Bureau said that it had resolved the case with the aid of environmental protection agencies at the city and Tongzhou district levels.

According to the statement, investigators discovered that the suspects were aware the company's pollutants exceeded the limit, but falsified monitoring data by tampering with the results related to sulfur dioxide to avoid detection.

The eight have been placed in criminal detention on suspicion of committing the crime of environmental pollution, it added.