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Share pageOur friendly neighbourhood pole Tymon Radwański made a statement to the Guardian outlet one day. As a member of Warsaw’s city activist group (Miasto Jest Nasze), an organisation that set up the Warsaw smog alert identifies the pollution problem in Poland as “beyond any Western standard”. Despite conditions, Tymon has told the Guardian that the Polish government has done nothing to reduce car imports, promote renewable energy or even protect green areas. As of now, the alert is instructed to be only announced at 600% of the normal air quality and the ministry of environment refuses to change that level as “they would have to announce the alert too often” further exacerbating the need for change in air quality within the Polish border. Tymon, a father, describes the air quality in the place of his home as “very bad” due to the intensive construction of apartment buildings in areas without proper public transport forcing people into privately owned cars. “Recently as more groups join the demand for better air, the city hall pretends they care, but there is no real action.”
Marking itself as the biggest city in Poland, Warsaw experienced ‘Moderate’ air quality according to the US Air Quality Index when compared to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended levels. A daily record kept by the AQI recorded extremely low to no levels of carbon monoxide in the past month. Higher levels of Ozone and Nitrous oxides were discovered with even higher levels of particle matter, poisonous and harmful to human health and life, throughout the days of March.
The city authorities had the ambition to make Warsaw the “Green Capital of Europe” back in 2015 with the motto “Million Trees for Warsaw”. However, they ended up with a million cars crossing the borders of the city every day without introducing new solutions aimed at changing the priorities of the transport policy of the Polish capital city. Transportation remains responsible for the most smog generated in the city.
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