Tropospheric ozone, a particularly complex pollutant and the most widespread in Spain, has fallen into a tailspin since the pandemic began. A total of 1.4 million Spaniards have breathed air with dangerous levels of this gas – taking into account the limits allowed by the European Union – since the beginning of the year, a figure far removed from the 9.6 million before the pandemic and even three million less than last year, when the confinement was decreed. If you take the much stricter scales set by the World Health Organization (WHO), the scenario turns black: people exposed to that unhealthy air skyrocket to 34.6 million, 73% of the population, which is which also represents a drop of between two and seven million people compared to years prior to the virus. Tropospheric ozone is a powerful oxidant that causes lung conditions, aggravates asthma, increases mortality in chronic patients, and causes headaches and fatigue, among other adverse health effects.
The decline “has had an influence on the fact that there have continued to be traffic restrictions and there has been less industrial activity, in addition to the fact that the summer was less hot than other years,” explains Miguel Ángel Ceballos, from Ecologistas en Acción. Ozone appears in spring and summer because to form it needs solar radiation, along with other pollutants that are called precursors and that are emitted by automobiles (nitrogen dioxide is the main one), large thermoelectric plants, industrial activities or intensive livestock. With this background, it is not surprising that its levels have fallen in a scenario with mobility restrictions due to the virus, which shows the connection between the production of this gas and polluting emissions. What conservationists did not expect is that once the COVID containment measures were lifted, ozone would be further reduced.
Of the two levels of surveillance, there have barely been fifty cases in which the population had to be informed (when the ozone concentration reaches 180 micrograms per cubic meter in one hour), when in 2019 there were 223. And only in Tarragona has reached the alert threshold (240 micrograms per cubic meter in one hour). It is the lowest figure since there are systematic records of this pollutant, in the early 1990s, indicates the report by environmentalists. The most affected territories are distributed in the Community of Madrid, the interior of Catalonia and the Valencian Community, the city of Cáceres and the industrial area of Puente Nuevo, north of Córdoba. Ozone has another peculiarity. It is not a static gas. It occurs in the areas where the substances that originate it are emitted, but then it moves and affects more virulence in suburban and rural areas downwind of large urban agglomerations.
Ecologists in Action warns that to date there are very few territories that have protocols for action against these ozone peaks, and only the Valladolid City Council “contemplates and applies traffic limitation measures” at that time. Up to 11 autonomous communities (Andalusia, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and the Basque Country), according to the report, still do not draw up plans to improve air quality, despite being mandatory. The Ministry for Ecological Transition has not prepared the National Plan for Tropospheric Ozone either, in which many regional governments hide to undertake the reforms that they have pending, warn conservationists.
There is only one way to stop the pollutant: reduce traffic, improve rail transport and energy savings and efficiency, among other measures, the NGO maintains. In addition, it is necessary to expand the available scientific information on gas dynamics, although this circumstance “cannot serve as a political alibi for not acting.”
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