Abstract:

Air pollution has become a major problem for our environment. It may cause health problems to living organisms or damage the natural environment or built environment. Most of the people live in areas, especially in cities, where the air quality standards cannot be met. The air pollution is caused especially by the increasing number of motor vehicles in crowded cities. The impacts of the traffic partly can be reduced by road reconstructions thereby the continuous movement of vehicles can be facilitated and traffic jams can be avoided. The reconstruction of a busy traffic junction into roundabout was aimed at in the downtown of Veszprém, Hungary from autumn 2011. The staff of the Environmental Mobile Monitoring Laboratory of the Institute carried out investigations to determine the increase in air pollution stemming from the reconstruction in the nearby public institutions. The air pollution was measured two times during and after the reconstruction, in March and in November, 2012. The results show that the reconstruction causes significant increase in the concentration of air pollutants. The measured values of ozone, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter contaminations were 88.0 μg/m3, 9.6 μg/m3 and 32.5 μg/m3 respectively in March. While these figures were 34.7 μg/m3, 2.3 μg/m3 and 18.0 μg/m3 in November. In contrary, the carbon monoxide concentration was lower in March 452.1 μg/m3 in comparison with the value measured in November (1066.7 μg/m3). In any case the air pollution does not exceed the concentration limits specified by the regulations. Further developments of the traffic patter restructuring could result in more reduction in the air pollutants thereby improving the living conditions of the people.

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