Take a photo, post it, alert it!

Encouraged by the problem of constantly air pollution, especially in the winter mounts, a group of students from the Josip Broz – Tito High School from Bitola, North Macedonia, under the mentorship of the geography teacher and in cooperation with the NGO Geosfera, conducted a school project. The main objectives of the project were: raising awareness among pupils about the harmful effects of PM particles on human health, identifying the city's air polluters, measuring PM particles concentrations in different locations around the city and informing the public and preparing draft mitigation measures of air pollution.

First, the students held an educative lecture in front of the rest of the pupils at the school about the harmful effects of PM particles on human health. Then, we started a campaign to involve students and all citizens of Bitola in identifying the city's air polluters. Through the social networks, instructions were given, such as through an online Аpp and the GPS signal from the smart phone, to take a picture from a suspicious air polluter and to post the image with the given geographic coordinates on our Facebook group. A working group of students, according to the given coordinates of the citizens, put the polluters on an interactive map of Google Maps. A link from the map was sent to the authorized environmental inspector in the municipality, with the goal of faster response and inspection to those polluters.

The absence of multiple measuring stations created numerous speculations among the citizens, but also with the institutions in the city, where the enormous air pollution originated, whether from the Thermal Power Plant Bitola or from the city itself.

Therefore, in cooperation with the NGO Geosfera, we decided to measure the current concentrations of PM10 particles in two periods of the day, between 14 and 15, and between 19 and 20 hours. The measurements were made with a mobile particle detector at 14 locations. After the measurements were made, using the Google Earth, two maps were created, showing the results of the measurements. The obtained results confirm the suspicions that the cause of enormous air pollution in Bitola is not TPP Bitola, but households that mostly warm their homes with firewood (over 60%, Source: State Statistical Office). Also, a large number of citizens of our Facebook group have commented that part of the problem are Forest enterprises, which usually supply wet firewood. According to the US EPA, wet wood produces three times more PM particles compare with dry wood.

The students from the school, in cooperation with the NGO Geosfera and the geography teacher, developed and submitted to the Municipality measures for reduction of air pollution. All these proposed measures were placed on an interactive map on Google Maps, through which all the citizens of Bitola will be able to visualize them.

The action received positive reviews from the public in the city and achieved the desired effect, which is raising awareness among young people and alerting the competent institutions to solving the accumulated problems.