Pollution levels in railway stations still way above legal limits – report
Excessive pollution recorded most days at stations in Tel Aviv, Bat Yam; Technion researcher says most dangerous place to sit on a diesel train is in carriage behind engine
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Pollution levels at train stations throughout the country have not improved since last year, Army Radio reported Sunday.
Environmental Protection Ministry monitors who measure nitrogen oxide and the size of polluting particles spewed from diesel-powered trains found that between January and the end of May, pollution was way above the level permitted for 85 percent of the time at the Shalom station in Tel Aviv, and for 84% of the time at the Komemiyut and Yoseftal stations in coastal Bat Yam, a half-hour drive south of Tel Aviv. Those stations are closed in, with little opportunity for air circulation.
There are no permanent pollution monitors in northern or southern Israeli stations, but the most recent tests carried out in Beersheba in the south and Nahariya in the north showed levels that were tens of percentage points higher than those allowed, the radio report said.
Amir Salzberg, head of the Environmental Protection Ministry’s transportation division, told the radio station that the trains were both breaking the law and endangering public health.
The ministry said it would consider criminal proceedings against Israel Railways if the situation continued unchanged.
Israel Railways said pollution levels would drop dramatically as trains driven by diesel — considered carcinogenic — are replaced with electric trains, a process that is ongoing. A spokesman said that the company works in cooperation with the ministry.
In a separate interview on Army Radio Sunday, Dr. Leonid Tartakovsky, a senior research fellow at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, revealed that the carriage behind the engine is the most dangerously polluted place to sit on a train.
If the engine was pulling the train, pollution levels in the carriage behind could reach 30 times those inside an intercity bus and twice those recorded on the platform at the Shalom railway station, he said.
These tiny particles, a tenth of a micron, are able to penetrate blood vessels and other parts of the body and are as dangerous to human health as asbestos, he continued, yet — while they are measured — they are not focused upon in pollution assessments.
The least polluted part of the train was somewhere in the middle, he said, adding, “There is no such thing as safe exposure.”
