There is no nation wide air quality monitoring.  Total suspended particulates (TSPs), SO2, NO, NO2, O3, CO, are measured in four cities only:  in Chisinau at six stations and in Balti, Ribnita and Tiraspol at two stations (see part Urban Environment).
 Emissions of  substances wich have a significant contribution to the acidification ar demonstrated in  Table 4.1
 

About 60% of the energy boilers have exceeded their technological lifetime by 21 years; 40% by 26 years.  Moreover, the boilers were built to save space, thus the installation of combustion gas desulphurization equipment is impossible in most cases.  The costs of the structural changes that would be required to permit the installation of such equipment sometimes
 
 Table 4.2:  Air emissions by energy sector, 1990-1996

 
Source: 1.  Department for Environmental Protection/The National Institute of Ecology, The State and Protection of the Environment in the Republic of Moldova. Report submitted to the European Conference of the Environment, Sofia, 1995.
 2.  DEP of Moldova, Environmental Objectives and Data. Chisinau, 21 March 1997, 16 pages.

equal the cost of the boilers.  The same problem applies to the potential reduction of NOx emissions.  The first step would be action to avoid the formation of thermal NO - the cheapest method of reducing NOx emissions (low-NOx burners).

Reported emissions from mobile sources come almost exclusively from petrol-fuelled road vehicles.  Diesel-fuelled  transport, mainly rail and off-road vehicles construction machines and agriculture tractors are excluded from the estimations. Road-vehicle emissions are estimated on the basis of the statistics of imported fuels and the 1983 former Soviet, theoretical emission rates for different pollutants, per mass of petrol or diesel consumed, without taking into account quality variations of fuels, the technical conditions of the vehicle fleet, or driving conditions.

Moldova’s Department for Statistics has calculated the total amount of emissions from motor vehicles.  The emission factors used differentiate between petrol and diesel.  In addition, factors are given for gas (LPG or compressed natural gas (CNG)), (see Table 4.3).

Lead and sulphur dioxide (SO2) emission factors are not influenced by vehicle condition and driving patterns, but can be derived directly from fuel specification data.  The estimates prepared by the Department for Statistics can be used for certain calculations.  For example, they lead to the conclusion that the average lead content of petrol is 0.23 grams per litre.  If the general assumption is applied that only about 75 per cent of the fuel’s lead is emitted into the atmosphere while the other part remains in the engine and the exhaust system, the lead content would be 0.3 g/l.  The official information points to about 0.2 g/l.  Such levels were common in western Europe (where it ranged from 0.15 to 0.3 q/l) before the introduction of unleaded petrol and catalytic technology in the mid-80s.
 

Concerning mobile sources, in 1996 about 25% of vehicles (65 000 in total) were controlled and every fifth vehicle exceeded the 1981 exhaust gas emission standards (in 1995 every third vehicle controlled failed). Vehicles that are more than 10 years old can no longer be imported.
 

To arrive at a preliminary comparison of the emission factors of at least the main classic pollutants SOx and NOx, with those in other countries of the UNECE region, their emissions, including the missing sectors and mobile source categories, were estimated.

The estimated emission factors per capita of SOx and NOx in Moldova are, respectively, 4 and 2 times lower than the OECD average, and much lower than in other countries in transition (Figures 4.1 and 4.2).