Assessment of the Air Quality in Bulgaria - Short Summary Based on Recent Modelling Results

The European Union has developed an extensive body of legislation which establishes health based standards and objectives for a number of pollutants in air. An appropriate method for evaluating the air quality of a certain EU-country is to contrast the actual air pollution levels to the critical ones, prescribed in the legislative standards. This study, which is part of greater one, is focused of the pollutants of most concern - the ground level ozone, particulate matter, and the sulphur dioxide, which is still a problem in Southeastern Europe. High-resolution data from the Bulgarian chemical weather forecasting and information system for the last three years are used to compute certain pollutant levels, which are further compared with the critical ones, prescribed in the EU-legislation directives. The obtained results can be treated as objective pattern of the situation over Bulgaria in the end of the first decade of the present century.