Minister Henryk Kowalczyk explained that he decided to send two mobile units to Lithuania to measure the immission of pollution – the amount of pollutants, which ended up in the atmosphere as a result of the fire – upon request of the Minister of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania. The Lithuanian services did not have enough mobile devices at their disposal to fully monitor the vast area affected by the waste fire.

“Yesterday, the representatives of the Inspectorate from Krakow returned to Poland, after supporting the local services in Lithuania since Sunday. The second Polish laboratory from Olsztyn remains on the site, monitoring the process of extinguishing the fire. They are highly qualified experts, who usually work on air monitoring networks in Poland,” he pointed out.

“This is the first time our Environmental Protection Inspectorate was tasked with such an international assignment. It is clear that the reform of this institution, which we started last year, had a good and lasting impact. This was possible thanks to reinforcing the institution’s human resources, new powers, as well as changes introduced to the functioning of the individual divisions of the Inspectorate. Bringing all the individual laboratories under the umbrella of the Central Research Laboratory of the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection enabled us to better manage resources, as well as to respond to crisis situations, such as the one we have seen in Lithuania,” said the Minister.

According to the minister, the recent events confirm that the Polish Environmental Protection Inspectorate is becoming a modern, well-equipped authority, which perfectly meets the needs related to environmental monitoring in Poland.

“Because of this event, we know that should the need arise, we can also help our neighbours, like we did in Lithuania,” he added.

The head of the National Reference Laboratory for atmospheric air quality Tomasz Frączkowski informed that we have about 200 permanent monitoring stations and about 300 collectors gathering particulate matter samples.

“In Poland, we also have 4 car-based mobile stations, as well as 20 trailer-based ones. In total, this amounts to more than a thousand measuring devices working around the clock,” he said.

Henryk Kowalczyk, Minister of Environment, also pointed out that offering support to Lithuania may be a starting point for closer cooperation of Polish and Lithuanian environmental protection services in the field of air monitoring.

“We want good cooperation concerning the protection of our environment with all our neighbours. Pollution knows no borders, which is why cooperation in this respect is crucial; however, we aim for broader collaboration, focused on exchanging experiences. Our extensive experience will definitely prove useful,” he pointed out.