Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: New Air Pollution Controls

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 3 2005 (IPS) - The Argentine capital now has two air quality monitoring stations that will for the first time allow officials to track the city's pollution levels and design policies to fight emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. The unit at Centenario Park, inaugurated in late August in the middle of Buenos Aires, was the second link in a chain that began with the installation of a base in the residential neighborhood of Palermo, in the city's north. In the next few months two more will be set up in La Boca and in Barracas, in the south.

The aim is to evaluate air quality in four zones in order to have “a complete panorama about the main sources of contamination, and promote preventative policies on climate change,” the government's environmental quality control director, Diego Martínez, told Tierramérica.

In Buenos Aires, located on flatlands swept by winds, live some 12 million people, with more than 3.5 million vehicles.