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Reuters
Agnes Bourbon, a researcher at the Institute of Physical Meteorology of the National Institute for Scientific Research and the University of Clermont-Auvergne in France, announced alarming levels of air pollution in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“According to a study by the institute, alarming levels of air pollution have been recorded in major cities in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Beirut and Cairo, in the past ten years, with serious health consequences,” Bourbon said in a statement.
He noted that “ozone and fine particle pollution, which are the two main families of air pollutants, registered high rates in this part of the world, with higher levels in the east compared to those registered in the west of this region” .
Bourbon noted that “over a period of ten years, international teams, under the coordination of the French National Institute for Scientific Research, have continuously monitored air quality in the eastern Mediterranean basin, in light of the lack of data available in this area, “and noted that” these teams focused Their research is focused on the two largest cities in this region, namely Istanbul, Turkey, and the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in addition to the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
He stressed that “their analyzes showed a high level of gaseous pollution, with a clear increase in the amounts of volatile organic compounds, which are among the precursors of ozone formation, as we head east in the region. of the Mediterranean. Between the western borders in Marseille, France, and the eastern borders in Beirut, Lebanon, the concentration is increasing. Volatile organic compounds in the air three times. “
This result was consistent with a research program on the Mediterranean environment, since this research is part of the “Mistral” program that was launched in March 2010 with more than a thousand scientists from 23 countries, who analyzed the environment in the Mediterranean region and revealed the results of their work this week.
Source: AFP
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