Heat and air pollution together menace people’s health Budapest

The aggregated impact of heat and air pollution could be especially harmful to human health. Both of these factors attack the respiratory organs and the heart, and they can multiply each other’s effect. For this end, the Budapest Municipality should take action without losing any time to protect people's health. This is what Clean Air Action Group asks in a letter written to the Mayor of Budapest, István Tarlós.
Though the smog alert of informational level has been issued by the Budapest Municipality several days ago, and the third (highest) level of heat alert has been announced by the Chief Medical Officer of Hungary, no concrete action has been implemented to protect the inhabitants. The two actions have been taken independently of each other, and the present laws do not entail any binding tasks for anyone in either case.
As a consequence of climate change, exceptional heat will occur in Hungary more often and will last longer. In the absence of proper actions we can expect that in these periods air pollution will also be significant. Therefore it is urgent to adopt legislation which takes into consideration the aggregated effect of high air pollution and intense heat, and prescribes substantive actions in these cases.
Clean Air Action Group, among others, proposes to reduce urban heat islands by decreasing the areas covered by concrete and by increasing areas covered by plants, as well as the replacement of old, extremely polluting buses as foreseen in the Environmental Program of Budapest for the years 2011-2016.