It is now a year since April 12th became National Air Day, thus reinforcing the growing interest in air pollution issues. This day intends to alert, raise awareness and involve society in the promotion of personal responsibility and create greater motivation and commitment to the protection of air quality.
This year the theme chosen was “Good Air for Health and Well-Being”, with health being the focus of this whole campaign, in order to highlight the effects that poor air quality causes, both in terms of human morbidity and mortality, and that it is within everyone’s reach to do something to improve air quality.
Every year in Portugal about 6000 people die due to air pollution problems. In the European Union, 6.5 million people a year fall ill for the same reason. Respiratory and cardiovascular problems are aggravated by inhalation of nitrogen dioxide, as large doses of this compound can inflame the lining of the lungs, thus reducing immunity to lung infections, which causes problems such as colds, coughing and bronchitis.
Nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, is one of the direct consequences of the combustion processes that take place in vehicles, mainly those using diesel as fuel. So it is easy to see that if we reduce the amount of cars in circulation and choose more sustainable alternatives (such as public transport, means of electric transport or even sharing vehicles with colleagues and friends) the amount of gases we send into the air is much lower, leading to an improvement in our quality of life and health.
In these weeks when, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a forced reduction in economic activity and in people’s mobility, nitrogen dioxide emissions have been drastically reduced, with reductions of 80% in Lisbon and 60% in Porto.
In Lisbon, the most striking example is Avenida da Liberdade, considered the most polluted avenue in the city. Here are the worst concentration values of some pollutants, and now it presents the lowest levels of pollution of this century, according to data from the environmentalist association Zero. Although the numbers are quite good, we know that when life returns to normal they will be difficult to replicate, especially in this very important artery of the city and with the conditions that exist today. However, we can take these results, keep them in mind and think of alternatives for our future mobility, always knowing that it is possible to improve!
According to the Zero document, “the average concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on working days in the last month since the beginning of the alert state which then became a state of emergency (16 March to 9 April) was the lowest in this century on a monthly scale of 25.9 mg/m3”.
The “average NO2 concentration of the last week’s working days (6-9 April) was the lowest on a weekly scale since the alert state was established 20.5 mg/m3” and the “average NO2 concentrations of the last fortnight’s working days since the alert state was established were the lowest since January 2019”, refers Zero.
We know that NO2 and other gases are harmful to air. We know that we need air and that its quality is essential to have a good life. We know that we can reduce gas emissions. So let us take this moment, which unfortunately has forced us to stop and rethink priorities, and try to do something positive for our health and environment!
The European Environment Agency has developed an air quality viewer, where you can see, by city or country, weekly concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and other particles: https://www.eea.europa.eu