Scenario Analysis of Air Quality Improvement in Warsaw, Poland, by the End of the Current Decade

• Published in: Atmosphere Vol. 13; no. 10; p. 1613
• Main Authors: Holnicki, Piotr, Kałuszko, Andrzej, Nahorski, Zbigniew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2022
• Subjects: Air pollution; Air quality; Air quality management; BEV/PHEV cars; Cities; Coal; Computer simulation; Decarbonization; Distribution; emission abatement; emission Euro norms; Emission standards; Environmental aspects; Environmental monitoring; Environmental policy; Environmental risk; Health aspects; Health risks; Heating; Hybrid electric vehicles; Metropolitan areas; Modernization; Nitrogen compounds; Nitrogen dioxide; Nitrogen oxide; Nitrogen oxides; Outdoor air quality; Particulate matter; Pollutants; population exposure; Preventable deaths; Public transportation; Quality control; Quality improvement; Traffic; urban air quality; Urban areas; Vehicle emissions; Poland; Warsaw Poland; Europe
• ISSN: 2073-4433; 2073-4433
• DOI: 10.3390/atmos13101613

Very low air quality in the Warsaw conurbation, Poland, similarly to the case in many large European cities, poses a serious threat to the residents’ health, being a significant source of premature mortality. Many results presented in earlier publications indicated local heating installations and car traffic as the main emission categories responsible for this adverse population exposure, where the dominant polluting compounds are NOx, PM10, PM2.5, and BaP. The last two mainly originate from individual household heating installations, both in the city of Warsaw and in its vicinity. To reduce the health risk of air pollution, the city authorities have recently made fundamental decisions, related to the individual housing sector, aimed at the radical decarbonization of all heating installations in Warsaw and its surroundings. On the other hand, the ongoing modernization of the city’s car fleet (including individual and public transport), taking into account the restrictive EU emission standards, as well as the quickly growing share of electric and hybrid cars (BEVs and PHEVs), gives a good prospect of a fundamental improvement in air quality in Warsaw conurbation. The main subject of the paper is a quantitative assessment of the air quality improvement in the current decade (by 2030), resulting from the above modernization activities. The final results are expressed as the attributed reduction in population exposure, which was found to be 28–30% with respect to NOx and PM, and the associated health risk, i.e., 204 fewer avoidable deaths with respect to NOx and 607 fewer with respect to PM2.5.