The impact of Covid-19 on air quality in Bucharest, Romania

Abstract

In this study, the authors aimed to assess the air quality within Bucharest City, Romania’s capital, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was well established that for quite a long period, Bucharest was among the worst Romanian cities in terms of air quality. Thus, in this study, an investigation of the effects of imposed quarantine and lockdown in terms of air pollution was carried out. The levels of the main air pollutants, particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and benzene (C6H6), were recorded within the period of January 2020–April 2022 by using six stationary monitoring stations (B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, B-5 and B-6) belonging to the Romanian National Network for Monitoring Air Quality. During the lockdown period (16 March–14 May 2020), the measurements indicated significant reductions only for PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide and benzene, while for PM10, due to the fact that a sandstorm appeared, the results were unreliable. The results focused on the B-3 and B-6 traffic monitoring stations because road traffic was one of the main sources of pollution in cities. Compared with the 2018–2019 period, during the lockdown, all the air pollutants from all the measuring stations dramatically dropped, highlighting thus the important role of traffic and its significant contribution to air quality depreciation in Bucharest, particularly in terms of nitrogen dioxide pollution. Therefore, the urgent need for decisions to be made in terms of improving the air quality of the city, particularly from a road traffic perspective, arose.