The air in Kyiv has been noticeably hazy since Jan. 17, and social media users have reported a smell of burning and breathing difficulties.
Ukrainian officials, however, say that it is a “meteorological haze” caused by natural weather conditions and residents should not be concerned.
“People call this phenomenon ‘an air blanket’ that covers the ground and accumulates waste from everyday human activity,” Oleh Ruban from Ukraine’s State Consumer Agency said in an interview with 112 channel on Jan. 18. He recommended citizens to avoid proximity to the sources of air pollution such as roads and heating plants.
Kyiv City Hall also warned drivers to take care on the roads, but did not make a statement on whether haze is harmful.
An expert of the National Ecological Center of Ukraine Oleh Savitsky disagrees. Savitsky thinks that officials don’t want to address the real cause of “smog” which he says is due to the worsening air quality in Kyiv.
“Indeed, weather conditions play the role, but calling the smog ‘a meteorological haze’ is incorrect,” Savitsky told the Kyiv Post.
The Central Geophysical Observatory at the Ukrainian Meteorological Center registered an excess of permitted levels of formaldehyde, carbon oxide, and nitrogen dioxide in Kyiv between Jan. 13-18.
Savitsky explained that the smog in Kyiv formed as a result of temperature inversion when warm air doesn’t rise to the upper layers of the atmosphere and stays near the ground. This inversion was caused by pollutants from diesel and gasoline-run car exhausts and coal-fired plants used for central heating.
The change should start with an air quality control system, Savitsky says, which Kyiv doesn’t have, and thus it’s impossible to identify what pollutes the air the most.
Secondly, unlike many cities around the world that implement a range of initiatives from car bans to building more bicycle lines, Kyiv city officials don’t take any steps to lower traffic pollution. He said that transport development should aim to reduce the number of cars in the city by developing public transport and the creation of more pedestrian and car-free zones.
The coal-fueled Darnitsa and Tripolska Central Heating Plants in Kyiv should gradually switch to cleaner fuel and until then have waste treatment facilities.
According to the 2016 World Health Organization report, Ukraine is listed sixth among the world’s most deadly countries for air pollution. It has the most deaths from air pollution per capita in Europe: 120 deaths per 100,000 people.
