BRUSSELS: In the skies above Katowice in the heart of Poland’s coal industry, Polish officials are deploying the latest weapon against air pollution: drones that inspect the city’s chimneys.
As soon as one of the unmanned aerial vehicles spots suspicious smoke rising from a rooftop, a second one follows up to “sniff” for pollutants with its chemical sensors.
Ground-based operators then send police officers to knock on the door of the offending home to see if they are burning poor quality coal, plastic bottles or some other substance.
“Most people decide to pay a fine immediately rather than go to court,” Katowice police spokesman Jacek Pytel said, adding that fines can be up to 120 euros ($148).
From coal-fired power plants in Europe’s east or car-clogged highways in the west, the European Union has for years struggled to enforce even the relatively modest pollution limits it has set.
Perhaps tellingly, at EU headquarters in Brussels, the air quality monitor on the busy road between the European Commission and the European Council buildings was recently not working for several months, according to activist group ClientEarth.
The four-lane highway separating the two main EU institutions is one of the most polluted in Brussels and has been at the centre of legal action launched by the NGO and five local residents, ClientEarth said.
“Citizens and organisations have a right to clean air,” ClientEarth lawyer Ugo Taddei said.
“We have achieved successes in the UK, German, Italian, French and Czech courts, with national judges ordering the adoption of more effective air quality plans and the introduction of restrictions on diesel vehicles.”
The key issue however is not so much the pollution limits themselves, but rather what action European countries propose to tackle a scourge that claims hundreds of thousands of lives a year.
The nitrogen dioxide belched by diesel cars, the curse of big cities, is to blame for 75,000 premature deaths a year, according to figures published last year by the European Environment Agency (EEA).
The scourge hits Europe’s biggest economies particularly hard, causing 17,000 deaths per year in Italy, 14,000 in Britain, 12,800 in Germany and 9,300 in France, it said.
But the most dangerous substance is tiny particulate matter (PM2.5), which measures a fraction of a human hair in diameter and is responsible for nearly 400,000 premature deaths a year, the EEA said. — AFP
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