Air Monitoring Reveals Most Polluted Streets in Tbilisi
Tea Mariamidze
Thursday, July 5
The information was released by the Head of Environmental Pollution Monitoring Department of National Environmental Agency Marina Arabidze.
According to her, air quality monitoring stations are located in 4 areas of Tbilisi: Tsereteli Avenue, Kazbegi Avenue, Varketili and Vashlijvari.
Out of the four districts, Vashlijvari showed the lowest pollution level.
As for the results from the Tamar Mepe Avenue, where the inspection was conducted yesterday, they revealed that nitrogen dioxide is 1.3 times higher than the norm.
The Head of the Atmospheric Air Agency Noe Megrelishvili says that the results are caused by the car emissions, adding there are lots of old cars in the capital, which is the main cause of the air pollution.
“Eco-friendly vehicles must be promoted. Also, it is necessary to develop public transport in the city, which will reduce usage of private cars and vehicles,” he said.
Megrelishvili also talked about another pollutant, sulfur dioxide, and noted that its reduction in the fuel produced brought tangible results.
"Sulfur dioxide across the country is much lower than normal. This is because we reduced sulfur content in fuel 25 times. This is a clear example of concrete steps that will result in positive results,” he claimed.
Two days ago, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze took part in the conference “On Building Consensus on Assessments of the Periodic Technical Inspection of Vehicles.”
He stated that tackling the existing ecological problems in Tbilisi require reforms that might be painful, but are necessary, and require the involvement of society and activities by non-governmental organizations.
Kaladze noted that the current ecological condition in Tbilisi “a complete catastrophe,” saying more than 500 thousand vehicles move throughout the city. He said that there has been a 7% rise in the number of vehicles imported from abroad and that 98% of them are old.
“The first thing to be done alongside with mandatory technical inspection is to ban import of old cars. This might cause dissatisfaction, but this is the step that has to be taken. This affects our kids” he added.