The impact of COVID-19 on air quality in Bucharest

Within this paper the authors are aiming to assess the air quality within Bucharest city, Romania’s capital, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is well established that, for a quite long period Bucharest was amongst the worst Romanian cities in terms of air quality. Thus, within this paper the investigation of the effects of imposed quarantine and lockdown in terms air pollution is carried out. The levels of the main air pollutants as: particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and Benzene (C6H6) were recorded within the period: Jan. 2020 – Apr. 2022 by using 6 stationary monitoring stations (B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, B-5 and B-6) belonging to Romanian National Network for Monitoring Air Quality (RNMCA). During the lockdown period (16. Mar. – 14. May. 2020), the measurements indicate significant reductions only for PM2.5, NO2 and C6H6, while for PM10 due to the fact that a sandstorm appeared, the results are unreliable. The results focus on the B-3 and B-6 traffic monitoring stations because road traffic is one of the main sources of pollution in cities. Compared with 2018-2019 period, during the lockdown all the air pollutants from all the measuring stations dramatically dropped highlighting thus the important role of the traffic and its significant contribution to air quality depreciation in Bucharest, especially in terms of NO2 pollution. Therefore the urgent need for decisions to be made in terms of improving the air quality of the city in especially from road traffic perspective arose.