Fog and smog push Sarajevo towards top of world pollution charts

The Star

The IQAir portal has consistently graded Sarajevo's air quality as "very unhealthy" or "hazardous" over the week, making the Bosnian capital the most polluted city in Europe.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00A blanket of fog and smog descended on the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo this week,

00:06reducing visibility to a few dozen metres and forcing residents indoors

00:11as pollution levels surged to hazardous levels.

00:15Only India's New Delhi clocked worse air quality on Wednesday, according to the IQ Air portal.

00:21The ranking put Sarajevo as the most polluted city in Europe,

00:26with Skopje in north Macedonia the next worst at number 10,

00:30even though the pollution situation in Sarajevo had gradually improved towards Friday.

00:56It's hard to breathe in the air, I went to work with a mask on in the morning,

01:00I'm afraid for my child, who is engaged in sports activities,

01:04it's very difficult to train at all in these conditions,

01:08I'm also afraid for my parents, because it's very difficult to deal with anything under this air.

01:16And that air, of course, enters the inhabitants of Sarajevo,

01:20and makes that air completely polluted.

01:26This is the problem of Sarajevo, by the way,

01:28and it can only be solved by eliminating the use of fossil fuels

01:34and reducing traffic in Sarajevo,

01:38which is congested due to the fact that the road infrastructure

01:45cannot accommodate all the number of cars driving on the Sarajevo streets.

01:51The IQ Air portal ranked Bosnia and Herzegovina at number 27

01:57in the most polluted countries ranking during the period of between 2018 and 2023.

02:04This made the country the most polluted in Europe.

02:08With a population of about 315,000,

02:12Sarajevo has almost no polluting industries,

02:14as they were destroyed during Bosnia's war in the 1990s.

02:18But the city has long suffered from temperature inversion,

02:22which presses colder air and pollutants from vehicles

02:26and fossil fuels closer to the ground.

02:29The government has pledged to ban older cars and suspend school classes

02:33and outdoor gatherings when air quality deteriorated.

02:42For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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