Avinyan doesn’t agree that Yerevan has poor ecology and that air pollution levels exceed norm

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YEREVAN, September 23 /ARKA/. The level of air pollution in Yerevan is within the norm, the city's mayor Tigran Avinyan said today. He does not agree with the widespread opinion that the city has poor ecology and the level of dust exceeds the norm.br/pp

At a meeting at the city hall on Monday, Sirarpi Haykazyan, head of the environmental protection department, reported that according to data from 85 air monitoring stations installed in the city (near construction sites), the PM2.5 (ultrafine inhalable particles) content was 12.3 μg/m.h, which is much lower than the legally set limit of 35 μg/m.h. Haykazyan added that the number of these stations has been increased to 117./pp

In response, Avinyan stated that the problem is that two government bodies - the mayor's office and the hydrometeorology and monitoring center provide different data./pp

According to him, all air quality indicators are currently available online, the problem may lie in difference in methodologies./pp

In any case, the data provided by our devices is confirmed by the internal devices of the cars. In other words, various discussions and legends about the air quality in Yerevan being very bad, in particular, that the air is very dusty, do not correspond to reality. The main indicator of air dustiness is the P.M. 2.5 indicator, which for the third month already shows either low dustiness or the lowest threshold of average dustiness. I cannot find any logical justification and reason other than the previously mentioned methodological differences, 117 devices cannot simultaneously provide incorrect information,’’ said the Mayor./pp

According to the specialized air quality monitoring portal IQAir, the concentration of PM2.5 in the air in Yerevan is 4.8 times higher than the WHO recommended average annual value. -0-/p