Why is it important?
Air pollution is one of the most urgent environmental and health issues in Serbia and in the Balkans, and is bound to make the effects of climate change even worse with extended temperature inversion periods during heating season that we already expect.
PM particles are the main pollutants in Serbia. Especially during the heating season, people get exposed to significantly higher levels of PM particle concentration than allowed. These exceedances are regularly 2 to 3 times higher than the limits set by legislation on air quality, whether we talk about particle level and concentration in the air, or a number of days with serious exceedances recorded annually.
This ‘blacklist’ is well documented in SEPA’s annual reports on air quality for 2016, 2017 and 2018. In 2018, for example, exceedances of annual permitted limit (40μg/m3) were documented all over Serbia.
According to EEA Report No 10/2019, 13,700 premature deaths caused by particle pollution (PM2.5) have been documented in Serbia. When it comes to years of life lost attributable to PM2.5 pollution, the number goes as high as 135,800.
In the region of Southeast Europe, these numbers are as following: Bosnia and Herzegovina – 58.100, Albania – 50.400, North Macedonia – 35.200, and Montenegro – 7.400.