A satellite image of the smoke plume over County Galway. University College Galway photo
By Irish Echo Staff
Taking the Galway air, normally a tonic, would not be a good idea this week – this as a result of smoke generated by massive gorse fires.
Over the last few days, emergency services have been battling ablazing gorse fire in the Cloosh Valley, Connemara area of County Galway.
Firefighters, with assistance from the Irish Air Corps, have also been battling extensive gorse fires in County Sligo.
Apart from the obvious devastating effect on wildlife and the damage to tree crops, the forest fires are causing a major air pollution episode in the area, said a release issued by University College Galway, which has been monitoring the effect of the fires.
With shifting winds the smoke from the fires has blown in various directions, but earlier in the week had Galway City under a shroud.
Smoke has been recorded at up to twenty times the normal level by a newly deployed “Citizen Science Air Pollution” monitoring network.
And reports have drawn comparison with the notorious air quality in Beijing.
Professor Colin O’Dowd from the School of Physics, and Director of the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies at NUI Galway, said: “Our urban and even rural air quality, all across the country, has been getting worse rather than better over the years, particularly with the increase in biomass domestic fuel consumption associated with the proliferation of wood and peat burning stoves.
“In contrast to this low-cost Citizen Science network, we also have deployed a highly sophisticated air pollution network nationally, the most sophisticated in the world, which has identified that the burning of domestic fuels causes a disproportionate amount of air pollution for very little heat generation.
“We have found that it is not uncommon in winter for pollution levels to quite regularly rival the air pollution levels in the most polluted megacities around the world such as Beijing.”
The gorse fires are only an addition to the problem highlighted by Professor O’Dowd.
According to the UCG release, the European Environment Agency updated its assessment for the health impacts of air pollution in the EU, and now estimates that in 2013 there were over 500,000 premature mortalities arising from air pollution in the EU overall, and that 1,500 occurred in Ireland.
