Sarajevo ranked the world’s most polluted city for two consecutive days by Swiss environmental monitoring company IQAir.
Sarajevo under a thick toxic haze.
The phenomenon has been repeated intermittently since the beginning of November.
For the second day in a row, the Swiss environmental monitoring company IQAir on Wednesday placed the Bosnian capital at the top of the ranking of the most polluted cities in the world.
IQAir compiles in real time the presence of natural and industry-induced pollutants in the atmosphere.
These two days at the start of the week, Sarajevo was ahead of Calcutta, the capital of Indian West Bengal, in the rankings.
The large Bosnian city is nestled at the bottom of a valley and records a sharp increase in pollution levels every winter.
The increase in automobile traffic and the use of coal for heating of the city are partly responsible for the worsening of the situation over the last ten years.
Faced with pollutants, the usefulness of wearing a mask to protect oneself is not unanimous among health professionals.
Dr. Harun Drljevic from Zenica Cantonal Hospital says: “I don’t think masks should be worn because the most dangerous part of air pollution, called “fine particles”, is PM 2.5 and PM 1.0, which easily pass through any mask and penetrate the lung barrier, pass the lung barrier and enter the bloodstream, whether we wear a mask or not.”
The European Union provides subsidies to around a hundred cities to help them achieve zero pollutant emissions within ten years.
Sarajevo benefits from these European aid.
The municipality has launched a program to improve the energy performance of public transport and the housing stock.