Submitted by Saba Iakobidze, Regional Ambassador in Georgia of the 22nd Eco-generation Program

Tbilisi, Georgia

Air is not a chemical element, it is a mixture of different substances, which makes it vulnerable to pollution. Air pollution means a high concentration of different chemical elements and gases in the air.

Air pollution can be considered as one of the many reasons of climate change, we know that the ozone layer which is protecting earth from ultra violet rays is slowly decomposing because of CO₂ emissions, and if we continue to treat our atmosphere like that, in about 100 years or more earth will become inhabitable.[1]

If we forget for a moment the fact that atmosphere is being devastated and look to this problem from the other side, we will still face another massive issue, concerning every human being on the planet, health problems. World Health Organization (WHO) published statistics where they say that there are 4.2 million deaths every year as a result of exposure to ambient (outdoor) air pollution, also 3.8 million deaths every year as a result of household exposure to smoke from dirty stoves and fuels, and last but not the least, 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds WHO guideline limits. Air pollution causes many diseases which are in most cases respiratory. Pollutants slip passes our body defences unnoticed and cause stroke, lung cancer and other diseases.[2]

According to “VOX” a daily journal, Georgia has the deadliest air pollutions in the world, charts say that in Georgia there are over 300 deaths in 100,000 people, which is far more than casualties of air pollution in other countries. Georgian public transport is not fully developed, that is why people buy cars and they produce more pollutants, also in Georgia there are many old cars, which are unsuitable for EU standards. We know that great pollutants of air are vehicles which are integral parts of our lives. In order to respond to this major issue, our government introduced legislative changes and effective from 1 January 2019 technical inspection was made mandatory for all kinds of transport. [3] To my opinion this is good start, this change helps our country not only to reduce old and second hand cars, it also reduces air pollution.

As a positive trend I see that society is becoming conscious and aware about the danger of air pollution and this is good because the government will certainly hear the public demand and make necessary regulations to improve the situation. In the meantime, Georgian fake start-up called Treepex even went viral globally by launching a campaign about introducing the product that cleaned the air that one breathes, in other words the first ever device that transforms polluted air into fresh oxygen. Millions of people watched Treepex's product-introduction video, and thousands publicly raised questions about the offering, discussing on various social platforms whether or not the device was real, and whether it would really improve one's health if used in heavily polluted cities. The firm's founders did many media interviews as well. Eventually the founders of a fake start-up revealed that The Treepex device does not exist, and in fact, it is Treepex's mission to make sure that the device never needs to exist.[4] This story makes me pleased that my nation is concerned with this problem and thinks about the ways (although some of them, like Treepex are not real, but still thought-provoking) of tackling the air pollution issue.