Ukrainian expert team from Eco City will introduce the newly designed technology for the air quality monitoring stations in the framework of the international project “Campaign for Clean Air in Eastern Ukraine Cities.” Environmental non-governmental organizations Arnika (Prague) and Dziga (Zaporizhzhya) will instal twenty-five devices in major industrial cities – Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipro, and Kramatorsk – by the end of the year.
“Oxygen,” the new generation of stations for independent public monitoring of air quality was developed by technicians from Eco City with the assistance of Arnika’s experts. Supported by the Transition Promotion Programme of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NED foundation, environmentalists will use them to get unusually reliable data on the local air pollution.
“The stations received new functionalities and an improved design that takes into account the peculiarities of air quality monitoring in the residential areas. We will place the stations directly to people’s homes in purpose to get as accurate and relevant figures as possible. We needed an effective, simple and affordable technical solution, which was developed only after a number of technical updates,” depicts Anna Zagrebelna, the coordinator of Arnika’s project in Ukraine.
Unlike traditional dust meters, the “Oxygen” station will provide seven indicators of air quality: suspended particles PM10 and PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide, carbon oxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, surface ozone, and total organic matter. Five of these pollutants are included in “A” priority list, regarding which air quality is assessed in accordance with the new Procedure for the State Monitoring in the Field of Atmospheric Air Protection (PKMU dated August 14, 2019 No. 827).
Enhanced functionality will allow not only to obtain operational data about the quality of atmospheric air, but also to accumulate large amounts of data for assessing and forecasting pollution indices and public health risks.
These days, the experts together with local public environmental initiatives are selecting locations for installing monitoring stations. A detailed presentation of the technical solution and installation of the devices will take place in the near future, presumably during November.
Air pollution is responsible for deaths of tens of thousands in Ukraine every year. According to World Health Organization data from 2016, more than 30,000 inhabitants will die annually from the disastrous air quality, and even more people will suffer from lung diseases and cancer.
