Overnight monitoring does not find high levels of pollution in Moscow air
MOSCOW. Nov 11 (Interfax) - The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry did not find levels exceeding the maximum allowable concentration (MAC) of pollutants in the Moscow air last night, a source in the ministry's Moscow city department told Interfax on Tuesday.
"The intensive monitoring of the air quality in the capital city done by task groups of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's main department in Moscow together with the city executive authorities and Rospotrebnadzor units in the period from 9 p.m. Moscow time on Monday until 7 a.m. on Tuesday did not detect levels exceeding the MAC or a nasty smell," he said.
The monitoring involving 46 stationary Mosecomonitoring posts continues, he added. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's main department in Moscow has assigned 1,244 people and 243 vehicles to support the monitoring process.
First Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shlyakov said earlier that the discharge of hydrogen sulfide, the source of a nasty smell in Moscow, was a one-time occurrence. The ministry said previously that the smell in many districts of Moscow was caused by a defect in a Moscow oil refinery's unit.
"The cause of the bad smell, which is now present in some districts of Moscow, is a defect of the hydrogen sulfide processing unit of the Moscow oil refinery," first deputy head of the ministry's main department in Moscow Yuri Akimov told reporters on Monday.
Yet the Gazprom Neft press service denied an alleged contingency at the Moscow oil refinery. "Information about an accident at the refinery does not correspond to reality," the company press service stated.