The first Ukrainian public air monitoring operating system “Environment OS” by EcoCity providing immediate information about environmental pollution was tested in real conditions when a dust storm hit in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia.
It has shown that the civic monitoring stations and this system were the first one to report an excess of dust and therefore provide information necessary for the citizens to be able to protect their health in worsen air quality conditions.
“When a dust storm started in Kyiv on June 22nd, the public monitoring system was the first to report an excess of dust. It was seen to be dust from the PM10 fractions, not emissions from combustion. But in Zaporizhzhia on June 21st, public monitoring showed an excess of dust, a state laboratory complained of citizens and confirmed a dangerous level of dust and phenol. And on June 9th, public monitoring of EcoCity revealed an accidental release of one of the plants, dangerous to health, which interested the government. Currently, the Ukrainian state does not provide urgent warning to the population about the dangerous conditions of environmental pollution, namely public monitoring proves its effectiveness in real conditions,” said ecologist Maxim Soroka, scientific and technical expert of the Clean Air for Ukraine project.
“On June 21, there were unfavorable weather conditions, due to which, together with the fog, industrial emissions fell on the city. The fact of dust pollution was recorded by the public eco-monitoring https://eco-city.org.ua and the noses of many Zaporizhians, who began to complain to the Zaporizhzhia City Council about pollution. According to my complaint, the eco-laboratory came and confirmed the eco-monitoring data on the excess of the maximum concentration limit for dust, and also recorded the excess for phenol (the sweet smell I complained about),” said Mykola Ralyk, a public activist from Zaporizhzhia.
In the event of adverse weather conditions, the mayor’s office is obliged to provide notification to all large polluting enterprises, which must take certain measures to reduce production capacity to prevent excessive pollution.
There are about 500 public monitoring stations of the Ukrainian EcoCity network in Ukraine, transmitting their data to the Internet, where any citizen can get acquainted with them free of charge and in real time on an interactive map on the Clean Air for Ukraine website. Now the first Ukrainian “Windows” for environmental monitoring systems, which has already proven its effectiveness in real conditions, has been added to the tools available for tackling air pollution.
“The new operating system Environment OS, invented by Ukrainian Dmytro Obukhov and with which we started to equip EcoCity monitoring stations, is designed for convenient processing and transfer of data of public environmental monitoring stations to users. Pollution warnings are provided in real time on the smartphone of the station owner or members of his family, neighbors, etc. Up to 30 users can be connected to each station. In addition, information is sent about the average level of pollution in the whole city and the weather forecast,” explains Oleksiy Trelevsky, curator of the EcoCity network.
The first Ukrainian environmental operating system “Environment OS” from the Ukrainian developer EcoCity will be presented at a press conference on June 24th by the international project “Clean Air for Ukraine”. New opportunities for the citizens to respond quickly to the environmental pollution with this environmental operating system will be introduced.
