Air Quality Researchers in Ukraine: War Emissions Monitoring, WHO Missions

Modern industrialized warfare generates air pollution at an enormous scale — from the combustion of military fuels and ordnance, to the burning of civilian fuel depots and industrial facilities, to the release of toxic gases from destroyed chemical plants and metallurgical complexes, to the fine particulate matter generated by the explosive destruction of buildings containing asbestos, lead paint, and other hazardous materials. In Ukraine, the destruction of Mariupol's Azovstal steel complex, the repeated burning of oil storage depots across the country, the fires at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant's nitrogen-oxygen station, and hundreds of smaller industrial incidents combined to create an air pollution crisis that added an environmental health dimension alongside the direct casualty effects of the war.

Ecoaction War Emissions Database

Ecoaction Ukraine developed a pioneering war emissions database that attempted to quantify the greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions caused by Russia's military operations in Ukraine. Their methodology drew on satellite imagery to identify fires and burning events, activity data for military vehicle movements and weapons use, industrial damage assessments, and academic literature on emission factors for various wartime activities. The database tracked categories including military transportation (aircraft, vehicles, ships), weapons detonations and fires, damaged and destroyed industrial sites (including metallurgical plants, oil refineries, and chemical facilities), and the heating sector's shift to more polluting emergency fuels during grid disruption. Their estimates placed direct war-caused greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 150 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent for the first year of the full-scale war — roughly comparable to the annual emissions of a mid-sized European country.

International Coalition on Environment, Development, and Finance (ICEDF)

The International Coalition on Environment, Development, and Finance (ICEDF) brought together international researchers and Ukrainian environmental scientists to develop rigorous methodologies for war damage emissions accounting. The methodological challenge is significant: accurately attributing emissions requires distinguishing war-caused events from normal industrial activity, accounting for the counterfactual (what would have been emitted without war), and dealing with data gaps in inaccessible combat zones. ICEDF collaborated with Ecoaction, the WHO, and academic researchers at European universities to develop peer-reviewed approaches suitable for use in legal reparations proceedings — since the quantitative basis for environmental damage claims requires defensible scientific methodology, not merely advocacy estimates.

Key Air Quality Incidents and Monitoring

WHO Environmental Health Missions

The World Health Organization's Ukraine country office and European Region center operated environmental health missions throughout the war — deploying teams to assess air quality conditions, water contamination, and health risks from industrial site damage in accessible areas. WHO published situation reports covering environmental health risks to civilians, provided guidance to Ukrainian health authorities on exposure limits and protective measures, and coordinated with UNEP on damage assessment methodology. The WHO's particular concern about the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — a potential source of radiological air contamination far exceeding any conventional industrial incident — led to specific monitoring and preparedness planning for a potential nuclear accident scenario, including iodine tablet pre-positioning and emergency response planning in surrounding oblasts.

Asbestos and Building Destruction

One of the less-discussed air quality threats of wartime is the release of asbestos fibers from the destruction of Soviet-era buildings — which were constructed extensively with asbestos-containing materials before the international awareness of asbestos carcinogenicity. When buildings are explosively destroyed or collapse under bombardment, asbestos is released as respirable fibers that remain in the air for prolonged periods. Communities near destroyed buildings face elevated lung cancer risk from fiber inhalation, with health effects that manifest only decades later. Ukrainian environmental health researchers and international partners developed guidance for demolition and reconstruction workers on asbestos hazard management — but the sheer scale of building destruction in cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Bakhmut means the population exposure toll is likely substantial.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the estimated total war-caused CO2 equivalent from the Ukraine conflict?

Ecoaction Ukraine, with the ICEDF methodology, estimated direct war-caused greenhouse gas emissions at approximately 150 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent for the period from February 2022 to February 2023 — the first year of full-scale war. Subsequent estimates for 2023-2024 suggested cumulative war-caused emissions had grown substantially. For comparison, Ukraine's entire national annual GHG emissions before the war were approximately 200-250 million tonnes CO2e (after the industrial decline from Soviet levels). The war thus added emissions roughly comparable to a significant fraction of Ukraine's entire normal national footprint, while also destroying major industrial emitters — creating a complex picture for climate accounting.

How is air quality monitored in active combat zones?

Active combat zones severely restrict conventional air quality monitoring — fixed monitoring stations can be destroyed, inaccessible, or cut off from data transmission. Researchers adapted by combining satellite remote sensing (which can detect large fires and smoke plumes from orbit), aircraft monitoring where permitted, and modeling approaches using known emission factors for observed activities. Social media and on-the-ground reporting sometimes provided early detection of pollution events. COPERNICUS, the EU's earth observation program, provided satellite imagery that was used to track fire events and plume dispersal. Ukrainian environmental authorities maintained some monitoring even in frontline areas, but data quality and continuity in heavily affected zones was inevitably compromised.

What are the public health consequences of industrial site destruction?

Destruction of industrial facilities — steel mills, chemical plants, refineries, fertilizer plants — can release decades worth of stored toxic materials in a single catastrophic event. The smoke from industrial fires contains dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heavy metals, and other carcinogens. Acute exposures cause respiratory irritation, headaches, and in severe cases chemical pneumonitis. Chronic low-level exposures increase cancer risk over time. Vulnerable populations — children, elderly, pregnant women, those with pre-existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions — are at highest risk. Mariupol's population, exposed to months of intense industrial burning at Azovstal and other facilities during the siege, likely faces elevated long-term disease burdens.

How does Ukraine's war air pollution compare to other conflicts?

The Ukraine war's industrial air pollution profile is distinctive because Ukraine had — and Russia deliberately targeted — a heavily industrialized economy with significant legacy heavy industry. Unlike many modern conflict zones in less industrialized countries, Ukraine's destruction involved metallurgical plants, oil refineries, and chemical complexes that release qualitatively different and more toxic air pollutants than the combustion of building materials and vehicles typical of urban warfare in other settings. Researchers have compared the scale to estimates from Iraq's oil field fires in the Gulf War, with some specific incidents (Azovstal, major fuel depot fires) generating plumes detectable by satellite at European scale.

Will Ukraine's air quality data be usable in legal proceedings?

Ukrainian and international researchers have been explicitly designing their air quality documentation with legal use in mind. The effort to develop peer-reviewed, methodologically transparent emissions databases stems from the recognition that reparations claims and criminal prosecutions will require quantitative evidence satisfying judicial evidentiary standards. Ecoaction and ICEDF researchers have engaged with legal experts developing the war ecocide framework to ensure their data collection methodologies are legally defensible. This intersection of environmental science and international law is a novel development — creating a bridge between the scientific community documenting the pollution and the legal community prosecuting the responsible parties.

Sources

1. Ecoaction Ukraine. War Emissions Database: Methodology and Results. ecoaction.org.ua, 2022–2024.
2. WHO Regional Office for Europe. Ukraine Environmental Health Situation Reports. euro.who.int, 2022–2024.
3. UNEP. Environmental Impact of the Conflict in Ukraine. unep.org, 2022–2023.
4. ICEDF. War Environmental Damage Emissions Accounting Framework. 2023.
5. Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Ukraine Conflict Damage and Fire Monitoring. copernicus.eu, 2022–2024.