Less air traffic - effects of Corona on ultrafine dust: Freising Citizens' Association hands over scientific publication

Created: 02/12/2022, 7:00 p.m

By: Andreas Beschorner

Handover of the publication: (from left) Wolfgang Herrmann, Reinhard Kendlbacher, District Administrator Helmut Petz and Prof. Oswald Rottmann.

© Civic Association

What are the effects of reduced flight operations during the corona pandemic on the concentration of ultrafine particles?

The Freising Citizens' Association has figures on this.

Freising/Airport

- It's a long, rocky road that the Bürgerverein (BV) Freising has traveled over the five years since it was founded.

And he was successful.

On Thursday, the representatives of BV district administrator Helmut Petz handed over a scientific publication on the effects of reduced flight operations during the corona pandemic on the concentration of ultrafine particles (UFP).

He praised the BV for his tireless commitment: "You have made the topic socially acceptable."

When the Corona lockdown also hit Munich Airport in March 2020 and flight movements collapsed, there was a great opportunity to confirm what had already been found in countless measurements: The airport was a "UFP hotspot", like as Wolfgang Herrmann from BV put it.

The measurement campaign, which was supported by the district of Freising and then even by the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment and was scientifically accompanied by the Helmholtz Institute, ran from June to August 2020 and resulted in 45 million individual measurement data, as Herrmann said at the meeting of the planning committee of the district.

The evaluated results have now been published in a prominent place in the specialist journal "Hazardous substances - air pollution control", which is published by the Association of German Engineers (VDI), among others.

The evaluation of the data is detailed and scientifically proven.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

The expected result of the measurement campaign, which is presented in the essay, was presented by Herrmann and BV chairman Reinhard Kendlbacher to the planning committee using an example: In February 2020 - i.e. before the first lockdown - there were around 1020 take-offs and landings at the airport , the mean UFP concentration between 6 a.m. and midnight was 51,544 particles per cubic centimeter.

In April 2020, when there were only 68 flights per day at the airport, the UFP concentration dropped to 7063 particles.

Another result: The UFP concentration correlates with the wind direction.

The data was recorded at seven measurement locations.

Kendlbacher emphasized that municipalities, the Northern Protection Community, the district, the district administrator, even the Freising parish association had supported the measurement campaign.

Despite repeated requests, there was only one source of no support: the airport.

The Munich Airport GmbH (FMG) not only did not install any UFP measuring points on the airport site, but also flatly refused to measure there at all, criticized the citizens' association.

"We cannot understand that," says Kendlbacher, who suspected that politicians wanted to put a protective hand over the airport.

The representatives of the citizens' association also brought two ways of reducing UFP pollution at and around the airport: firstly, desulfurization of the kerosene to less than ten milligrams per kilo (ppm) - kerosene is currently at 100 to 600 ppm – , on the other hand towing the aircraft from the landing to the gate and from the gate to the take-off, called a taxi bot.

More current news from the district of Freising can be found here.