Beat air pollution

Liliya Sedova (Russia)
Honorable Mentions

Air pollution is the most dangerous type of pollution as you couldn’t see it and often couldn’t hide from its negative consequences. Moreover, it is a problem, which exists all over the globe, in each country. Unfortunately, air pollution is widespread among developing countries as they often have an absence of more effective technologies. In this essay I would like to discuss the problem of air pollution in the case of Russia, my homeland, and point out four main causes of bad air quality affecting Russian cities.
One of the most acute causes of air pollution in Russia are emissions of landfill gases. Now country stands in the way of large-scale garbage reforms. Majority of functioning landfills in Russia were built in the last century without any technologies preventing toxins of hitting the soil, water and air. Almost all these landfills are overfilled with modern garbage consisting primarily of plastics and e-litter, which release dangerous toxic components in the environment during decomposition. The most widely known trash problem occurs in Volokolamsk city, which situated in the Moscow region. People living here are suffering from air pollution caused by toxic landfill gases from Yadrovo landfill. Awful smell attacks the city almost every day, people suffer from dangerous diseases, children have sudden and massive allergic reactions and have to undergo treatment in hospitals. Landfill Yadrovo is the reason of this ecological catastrophe in Volokolamsk but it can’t be closed as there are no other alternatives to place large amounts of garbage produced by the capital of Russia, Moscow.
Heavy automobile traffic and absence of natural filters like parks and green corridors in Russian cities are another causes of air pollution, which become more and more acute. Automobile demand is growing year by year because the quality of public transport is not good enough to travel long distances from home to work daily. So, the most of Russians aim to have their own automobile, not thinking about that this decision worthening air quality and affects their health in the long-term period. Moreover, some car owners have vehicles, which outlive their operational life decades ago, and continue to use them still because they don’t want to spend money at a new one. According to official statistics 65% of Russian trucks are more than 15 years old. In this case there should be introduced a truck usage time limit for both commercial and government vehicles. The problem of air pollution could be significantly improved by political measures aimed to develop the system of electric vehicles and charging points in the cities, to create a connected chain of forest areas among the cities and to ban public transport using internal combustion engine.
Another widespread problem of air pollution in the most Russian industrial cities are out-of-time factories releasing chemicals and toxins in the air, which affect the health of people and cause acid rains. Some of such industries have been working since USSR period without thorough renovations and modern filters. Commercial industries need to spend a lot of money to rebuild their factories according to modern quality control requirements. Large investments is the main barrier on the way to innovative technological breakthrough among owners of factories. Government should subsidize such measures of renovation for big and old industries and in the same time toughen existing laws regulating the allowed amounts of toxic components that could be released in the air.
Forest fires, the less well-known cause of air pollution in Russia, but the consequences are not less catastrophic both for human health, biodiversity and climate. This summer there were the strongest forest fires since 2003 and the area of forest comparing to the size of Belgium has burned. The main causes of such uncontrolled fires are illegal forest cutting and dry and hot weather supported by strong winds. But this problem is the most difficult to solve as the territories where fires were burning mostly situated in remote areas and the distance to water sources is too large. For example, the distance from the nearest river to the hearth of fire may take you 2 hours of flight by plane or helicopter to reach it. So, it is needed to spend a lot of human and financial resources to beat the fire. But this problem can be solved if a smart system of preventing forest fires would be created. On the accounted distance with each other the chain of water tanks should be situated as well as the amount of air devices and firemen should be increased to solve the problem of annual forest fires. Moreover, with the use of drones policemen could prevent illegal forest cutting as well as find new centers of ignition before fire begin to spread.
Humanity must create the measures of preventing air pollution across the globe as soon as possible and we have all technological decisions for it. Anyway we have only one and the best home ever in the universe. And in the same time, we have only one air for all, and everyone has only one life that should be happy and without diseases caused by bad air quality. Finally, not those economy is successful, which is the biggest GDP producer, has a strongest army forces or high economic well-being but only those, in which quality of air, water and soil is so good to use all these natural resources without fear.