Do you want to get information about the air quality in your city and related risks for your health? In case your town hall does not publish such notifications and you cannot afford to buy your own monitoring station, you can get it now for free. On April 14th, the Clean Air for Ukraine Project starts the first edition of the EcoQuiz. The prize is an innovative AirFreshMax monitoring station from EcoCity; the first winner will be announced on April 29th.
By answering the questions of the EcoQuiz, participants from all over Ukraine can win a civic air monitoring station. AirFreshMax is a state-of-the-art EcoCity public air quality monitoring station that can be installed outside the window and find out the level of pollution in real-time, giving the information also to every citizen of Ukraine through an interactive map on the Clean Air for Ukraine website.
“The new generation of AirFreshMax stations has the author’s operating system Environment OS from our developer Dmitry Obukhiv. The winner of the EcoQuiz will have the opportunity to be the first one to test the new operating system and to receive even more information about the air quality on his/her smartphone,” explains Oleksiy Trelevsky, director of EcoCity.
How to win the air monitoring station for free?
Those who want to win the public air monitoring station EcoCity or just to learn more about industrial pollution in Ukraine have to answer 10 simple questions and follow the Facebook page, where the first winner will be announced live on April 29th. “As proved by our long-term joint work on mapping the state of air pollution in Ukraine, it is necessary to support the monitoring by civil society in order to get and share the data that are not publicly available as the state system is unfortunately still missing,” explains Maksym Soroka, scientific and technical expertise of the Clean Air for Ukraine Project.
The quiz is one of the events of the Clean Air for Ukraine Project, implemented in Ukraine by the non-governmental organizations Arnika from Czechia and EcoCity from Ukraine. The project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic within the Transition Promotion Program, and the National Endowment for Democracy, USA, is designed to support active citizens of industrial cities to fight air pollution – currently one of the main health risks in Ukraine.
“The first step on the way to saving our health is detailed knowledge of the pollution. Unfortunately, data from governmental monitoring is not publicly available, and in some towns, monitoring is not established at all. We believe that reliable information will help the residents to demand the necessary measures from the responsible state authorities and politicians,” says Martin Skalsky from Arnika.
Notes:
The Clean Air for Ukraine Project was founded in 2018 and aims to unite citizens and public initiatives of industrial cities affected by air pollution and to promote public campaigns.
Arnika (Czechia) is one of the largest non-governmental environmental organizations in the Czech Republic, established in 2001. Arnika brings together people who want a better environment. We believe that natural wealth is not only a gift but also a duty to preserve it for the future. We base our activities on three pillars: public involvement, professional arguments, and communication.
EcoCity (Ivano-Frankivsk) is a team of technical experts on public air quality monitoring in Ukraine. EcoCity manufactures monitoring stations available to the public and coordinates the all-Ukrainian website to inform the public about the level of pollution and air quality in Ukraine.
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