Experts from Poland and Czech Republic in joint project to improve air quality
06:00
One of the objectives of the joint i-AIR Region project, implemented by experts, local government officials, and social activists from both countries, is to harmonize the regulations and tools for monitoring and improving air quality in the border regions of Poland and the Czech Republic.
The Czech-Polish project is co-financed from EU funds under the Interreg V-A Czech Republic-Poland operational program. Recently, its participants summed up the three-year implementation of the project.
Experts comprehensively analyzed, among others, the way of monitoring air pollution in border regions.
"Over three years, the project compared measures and legal instruments in the field of air protection so that they could be standardized. Project experts also developed a uniform methodology for measuring air quality using drones or categorizing combustion processes based on actual measurements from individual heating," Pavel Santarius, the project manager on behalf of the Association for the Development of the Moravian-Silesian Region, informed.
According to experts, measurements of air quality (immission) in both border regions are carried out in the same way, and now – after last year's changes in some regulations – there are no significant differences in this respect.
Until recently, the biggest difference in smog situations was the limit for announcing information and alarms related to exceeding air pollution standards – in Poland the alarm threshold was twice as high as in the Czech Republic. However, since October last year, when the limits for reporting smog situations were tightened in Poland, they are similar to those in force in the Czech Republic.
(PAP)
