THE GUARDIAN
When the Yugoslav prime minister Džemal Bijedić promised to clean the country’s air at a conference in Belgrade in 1974, a reporter from the New York Times wrote that there was little hope of early relief for the city’s residents, who felt the pollution was getting worse. “The choking, sulphurous atmosphere of Belgrade and several other major Yugoslav cities reddens eyes, shreds nylon stockings and ruins pianissimo passages in the concert hall because of the nearly continuous coughing it causes in audiences,” the writer said.
Half a century later, residents of Belgrade are still holding their breath. “I have asthma and it’s killing me,” says Dejan, 40, a graffiti artist and MC who runs a paint shop in the industrial Palilula district. “It’s not smog, man, it’s a black fog. You cannot see.”
The air in the capital of Serbia, a country of 7 million people in line to join the EU, is worse than in almost any other city in Europe. Belgrade is home to five of the 15 most polluted districts on the continent, Guardian analysis of modelling based on European air quality data has revealed. Foul coal plants, vast landfills, old vehicles and bad heaters spew a cocktail of toxic particles that land in the lungs and veins of the city’s residents.
Bubbling anger has at times boiled over into protests, but little has been done to make the air safe. Last month, in one of its first attempts to protect children from toxic fumes, the city put out a tender for 11,500 air purifiers to go in its schools and kindergartens.
In doing so, “the city is admitting they cannot solve the problem”, says Milica Jablanović, a councillor with an opposition green party and a researcher at the Institute for Educational Research. “I sometimes have the feeling I am doing damage to my own children because I live here.”
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