site.btaMass Campaigns Needed to Raise Awareness of Dangers of Air Pollution - Experts

The Association Air for Health in cooperation with the Ministry of Health presented three reports on air pollution at BTA's national press club here on Friday. The experts said that campaigns need to put up information boards in public spaces, recruit celebrities and hold discussions in schools and universities in order to raise awareness of the risks of air pollution.

Outgoing Deputy Health Minister Mihail Okoliyski pointed out that air pollutants contribute to worse public health. He reported that the Health Ministry is planning a massive awareness campaign focused on popularizing screening. Okoliyski reported that he has asked the World Health Organization to conduct a study on the behavioural attitudes among Bulgarian smokers.

Okoliyski said that more monitoring stations should operate across the country to monitor the saturation of fine particulate matter in the air.

Nadezhda Bobcheva, Sofia Deputy Mayor with the Green System, Ecology and Land Use Division, said that the introduction of low-emission zones (LEZ) in the central part of the capital is one of the measures to improve air quality. "We realize that this was only for three months, but it was a good step," she said and added that initial data on the effect of LEZ shows that there were fewer days with pollution in downtown Sofia. Another finding is that most cars that violated the LEZ had licence plates issued outside Sofia.

Prof. Dr. Angelika Velkova reported that 9% of deaths are associated with air pollution, while one in three Bulgarians struggles to access, read, understand and use health information to improve their own health. The most vulnerable are children, pregnant women and the elderly, according to Velkova's report.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Angel Dzhambov reported that there has been a steady trend of improving air quality over the past decade.