Dedicated Siberian smog monitors battle for unpolluted air
MOSCOW: Weary of local officials dismissing the deadly smog that covers their city, citizens of Siberia’s industrial hub Krasnoyarsk decided to take action and monitor air quality themselves.
But they quickly came up against those same authorities in the remote region 4,200 kilometres east of Moscow.
Krasnoyarsk boasts dozens of factories as well as one of the world’s biggest aluminium plants. The natural resources and environment minister recently ranked it as one of Russia’s most polluted cities.
Yet little had been done to investigate air quality.
A dedicated group, led by 34year-old Igor Shpekht, last May resolved to change that.
“A fog regularly appears over Krasnoyarsk and people have difficulty breathing,” he told AFP.
“But weather services say the concentration of harmful elements does not exceed the norm. Because of this incoherence, we have the impression that we are being duped.”
In Russia, the official fine particle pollution danger level is 40 per cent higher than that set by the World Health Organisation. Local weather services use a so-called “standard index”, but according to their data, pollution is always relatively low.
“After several years of inaction from the ministry of ecology and local weather services, we decided to measure pollution levels ourselves,” Shpekht said.
The group installed seven French-made devices at the end of 2017 to measure tiny particles suspended in the air.
Their data is now published in real time on the website Krasnoyarsk Sky (krasnoyarsknebo.ru) as well as social media and mobile phone apps.
The results regularly show pollution levels exceeding the norm, sometimes greatly so.
On a visit to Krasnoyarsk on Feb 7, President Vladimir Putin ordered officials to come up with a plan to improve the dire ecological situation “without any delay”.
“I’ve heard that this is one of the most sensitive issues,” said Putin, who is running for a historic fourth term in Russia’s March elections.
“Let the president breathe our air,” Krasnoyarsk Sky activists responded on Instagram.
Due to a lack of funding, many Russian air quality control systems have not been modernised since the fall of the Soviet Union. In some cities, they do not exist at all.
“You want to test the quality of the air? We are ready to do it. On condition that we receive financing,” Maksim Yakovenko, the chief of Russia’s Federal Service for Meteorology, recently told Kommersant newspaper.