Air quality is a serious problem in many big cities and Brussels is unfortunately highly affected with this issue. This weekend, Brussels citizens came to the streets and various public spaces and decided to raise their concern about the unsustainable situation with the air pollution in the city.
Air pollution has a significant impact on our health and the environment. It is estimated that every year 12,000 Belgians die prematurely as a result of poor air quality in Belgium. This also means that citizens of Brussels have a very low quality of life and have higher chances of getting respiratory and other related diseases. Our capital is also widely known for its traffic jams and is among the most congested cities in Europe. Air quality in Brussels is regularly so low that it has been recently called upon by the European Commission for its systematic breaches of European air quality standards.
However, the political response to this urgent public health problem is very slow. This is why a group of citizens from Brussels who want to breathe cleaner air and push for change, organized a public manifestation on 18th February. The goal of the action was to raise awareness at all levels of power. Most iconic statues and Brussels landmarks were covered with messages against air pollution and many of the statues ‘wore’ head masks in order to be able to breath cleaner air in a heavily polluted city.
The organizers were happy with the manifestation and concluded the action with the following message: Thank you all for coming, we hope the message was received loud and clear: citizens want clean air!
I want more of this type of citizen-led action #soicanbreathe in Brussels. Thanks for the great Saturday, folks! #BXLDemandsCleanAir pic.twitter.com/clo9TkDwqU
— Lucas Demuelenaere (@ldemuele) February 18, 2017
You can follow the future actions of the group on their Facebook page BruxselAir or on Twitter channels: BruxselAir , CleanAirBxl or Bral Brussels. The photos on Twitter and Facebook were shared under the #Bxldemandscleanair hashtag.
#BXLDemandsCleanAir #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/WDDJ4PBC8m
— Les Bloemekets (@bloemekets) February 18, 2017
Photos by: Jonas M. Helseth / Twitter
Facebook group Bruxsel’Air
