Airports are concentration points of fuel combustion due to the high activity rate of mobility movements. Measurements have shown that air pollution reaches concentration peaks that are up to 6 times higher than along dense traffic arteries. People who are working on the airfields are exposed to hazards that produce cancer, heart, artery and lung problems. People who live and work nearby also take their share of the problem.
Here you find some reports of local and international action groups:
AiREAS is a citizen’s initiative that invites government, business, science, etc to take co-responsibility for creating healthy living and working environments using air quality and public health as measurement points. This is the infrastructure we laid out in the city of Eindhoven as a backbone for proactive health and air improvement initiatives.
Airport Eindhoven
Having a living lab to co-create a healthy city we also would like to include our local airport in the program. Various environmental groups and neighbors of nearby city quarters already address the issue of noise pollution, the flying zones and quit periods without flights at night. The management of the airport shows no sign of interest to address the issues. The main commercial concern seems to go to the growth of traffic and profitability of the airport area.
We all love to have an international airport nearby for our holiday and business flights throughout Europe. But we also share the thoughts of the airport director at Copenhagen who claims “that no one should get sick by coming to work”. We apply this also to the people who live nearby air traffic or travel regularly.
The challenge we all face is to live a life of wellness without damaging ourselves nor our environment beyond repair. This can only be done if we are all willing to address our wellness with care and responsibility developing applying knowledge and technology that diminish these hazards.
We will continue to build up the pressure locally as a high tech region with a high level of awareness and initiatives for sustainable human progress. We invite you all to do the same in your own home areas, considering even to establish a local AiREAS citizen’s initiative and create with me a worldwide network that address health and wellness beyond fragmented political and economical interests.
We state that self aware citizenship is the new entrepreneurship of the 21st century. We are a 7 billion people multinational that can make a difference: health, no debts, sustainable progress, safety, auto-determination and freely applied learning process (sustainocracy is a network of Sustainocrats).