Our thanks go to the members of the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality (SILAQ) Working Group, in particular Karel Blaha, Czech Ministry of Environment; Zsuzsanna Bibok, Hungarian Ministry for Environment and Regional Policy; Jozsef Kutas, Hungary; Irena Plewicka, Polish Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry; Elena Popovici, Romanian Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environment Protection; Anna Violova, Ministry of Environment of Slovakia; Katarina Magulova, Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute; Anton Planinsek and Bojan Rode, of the Hydrometeorological Institute of Slovenia, for their help in obtaining the data provided in this report and their careful review of and comments to the structure and content. Thanks are also extended to the colleagues from the Balkan Science and Education Centre of Ecology and Environment in Sofia for preparing this Synthesis Report.
We are also grateful to Sylvia Correa, Jerry Newsome and Robert Judge from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Magda Lovei from the World Bank, Ulla Blatt Bendtsen from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, Paul Dax from the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) office in Bulgaria, Robert Anderson who served as a consultant to HIID, and Bjorn Reush from the Norwegian Petrol Association, for their support in sharing their experiences, providing information and their valuable comments.
We would also like to acknowledge the additional help received and work performed by the UN ECE Task Force on the Phase-out of Lead in Gasoline and the specific assessments and studies offered by the Danish Government and those performed by COWI, Denmark, and the Danish Technological Institute.
Special thanks goes to the staff of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe: Miroslav Chodak and Mihail Staynov for the coordination of SILAQ activities and for reviewing the Report, Pawel Kazmierczyk for overseeing its compilation, Jerome Simpson for editing the Report, and to Sylvia Magyar for its layout and printing.
Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which made the work of the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality possible.
I trust this Report will provide invaluable information in all follow-up work to the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality.
Dimiter Kantardjiev
Chairman, Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality
Director General, National Centre of Environment and Sustainable Development,
Ministry of Environment and Waters, Bulgaria