Oslo to assess measures to improve air quality
Oslo Municipality is investigating what it can do to improve air quality and avoid exceeding limits on hazardous particulate matter, it announced Tuesday.
Many associate Norway with fresh mountain air, and some will have even heard anecdotes of the rich and famous paying to fill their homes with air from the country. However, the country’s capital, Oslo, is working to improve air quality, the city’s local authority has announced.
Measures are being mulled over to prevent new limits for hazardous particulate pollutants from being exceeded. New limits for both coarse-grained and fine-grained particulate matter were introduced at the turn of the year.
Coarse-grained pollution is mostly dust and particles from the city’s roads. The limit for this has been exceeded several times this winter, the Urban Environment Agency said.
The agency said that it believed that better routines for cleaning and dust mitigation techniques, which aim to reduce the amount of coarse-grained particle pollution, could be a way of ensuring the city’s air quality remains within acceptable limits.
The main source of fine-grained particle pollution is wood-burning stoves. One option that Oslo could adopt would be a ban on non-clean-burning fireplaces. Bergen Municipality adopted a similar ban last year.
READ ALSO: How Oslo’s proposed parking reform could cost residents and visitors
The Urban Environment Agency said that it was too soon to say whether Oslo would introduce a similar ban but that it was working on mapping emissions from wood-burning to help it target measures more effectively.
“We are working to map the emissions from wood-burning so that it will be easier to find and implement targeted measures,” Sirin Stav, environmental councillor in Oslo, told public broadcaster NRK.
The councillor added that a reduction in exhaust fumes from cars means that emissions from wood-burning has emerged as one of the most significant contributors to fine-grained particle pollution.
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Many associate Norway with fresh mountain air, and some will have even heard anecdotes of the rich and famous paying to fill their homes with air from the country. However, the country’s capital, Oslo, is working to improve air quality, the city’s local authority has announced.
Measures are being mulled over to prevent new limits for hazardous particulate pollutants from being exceeded. New limits for both coarse-grained and fine-grained particulate matter were introduced at the turn of the year.
Coarse-grained pollution is mostly dust and particles from the city’s roads. The limit for this has been exceeded several times this winter, the Urban Environment Agency said.
The agency said that it believed that better routines for cleaning and dust mitigation techniques, which aim to reduce the amount of coarse-grained particle pollution, could be a way of ensuring the city’s air quality remains within acceptable limits.
The main source of fine-grained particle pollution is wood-burning stoves. One option that Oslo could adopt would be a ban on non-clean-burning fireplaces. Bergen Municipality adopted a similar ban last year.
READ ALSO: How Oslo’s proposed parking reform could cost residents and visitors
The Urban Environment Agency said that it was too soon to say whether Oslo would introduce a similar ban but that it was working on mapping emissions from wood-burning to help it target measures more effectively.
“We are working to map the emissions from wood-burning so that it will be easier to find and implement targeted measures,” Sirin Stav, environmental councillor in Oslo, told public broadcaster NRK.
The councillor added that a reduction in exhaust fumes from cars means that emissions from wood-burning has emerged as one of the most significant contributors to fine-grained particle pollution.
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