Belgrade’s Silent Killer

Flying in to Belgrade at this time of year it’s difficult to miss the layer of smog  that hangs over the city. In the winter, coal-fired heating plants add additional sulphur dioxide and particulates to a witches brew of contaminants at levels often many times higher than World Heath Organisation guidelines.

The key polluter however is the car. With more than 1.6 million cars on Serbia’s roads in 2009, up by 10.4 per cent on a year earlier, many of them second hand imports from the EU, the authorities are struggling to keep pollution under control. According to Dragoljub Djakonovic, the city secretary for transport, the average age of cars in the capital is 15 years.

“There isn’t much industry in the city, so the biggest polluter in Belgrade is definitely traffic,” says Radomir Mijic, from the secretariat for environmental protection.

According to a report from the Public Health Institute Batut, which monitors the levels of pollutants at 14 of Belgrade’s major road intersections, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead, sulphur dioxide and volatile organic compounds were all consistently above national and international guidelines, in 2009 (the latest available data).

The worst situation is at Zeleni venac where the concentration of carbon monoxide is four times higher than guidelines, nitrogen dioxide two and a half times higher and sulphur dioxide six times higher.

Things are not much better at the monitoring points at Slavija, Vukov spomenik, the crossroads at Bulevar Despota Stefana and Cvijiceva Street,   Glavna and Zmaj Jovina in Zemun and Kneza Milosa and Kralja Milana where levels were at least double the guide figures.

Public health officials are concerned about the levels of sulphur dioxide. “Recent studies showed that sulphur dioxide, even in low concentrations can cause significant problems in the airways of sensitive individuals. The most susceptible are children of pre-school age, the chronically ill and elderly people,” says Snezana Matic from City Institute of Public Health.

Winter brings the additional problem of particulates, microscopic soot particles emitted by diesel engines the city’s heating plants and homes which burn brown coal. WHO guidelines recommend a level no higher than 20 microgrammes per cubic metre, but this level is exceed almost everywhere in  Belgrade during the winter. Particulates have been linked to respiratory illnesses including cancers of the respiratory tract.

One solution is to reduce the volume of traffic in the city but that, in the short term, may be easier said than done.  
“Construction of the Belgrade Bypass and of the planned subway system would allow us to move all the heavy traffic outside the city, and to introduce ticketing for those who want to drive in the city’s centre,” says secretary Dragoljub Djakonovic.

But with no clear deadlines for the completion of the bypass and tentative announcements that the first line of a subway might  be opened in 2019, with the two additional lines not following for a further ten years, Belgraders have a long wait ahead.

Experts also recommend the provision of pedestrian zones in high pollution areas and new zones are planned in Vracar, Palilula and Cukarica next year.

“I hope that we’ll be able to do what we have planned. The financial situation is still difficult and the secretariat’s budget for next year will probably be even smaller,” says Djakonovic.

The transport secretariat has also introduced new parking zones in the centre in an attempt to deter drivers from coming into the city, but with 1.5 million passengers already making use of the overloaded public transport system daily, it may take more than parking charges to deter drivers.

Djakonovic is pinning his hopes on improvements to the public transport system including the introduction of new technology which he hopes will attract people away from their cars.

An integrated ticketing and vehicle monitoring system will be introduced by the end of 2011. All public transport vehicles will have GPS systems installed, displays at stops will show the expected time of the next bus or tram and  vehicles will carry displays showing the current location and the next station.

And whilst some indicators are positive, progress towards cleaner air is painfully slow. Says Mina Ciric from the NGO Belgrade Environmental Centre: “We are moving closer to the EU environmental standards, but it’s going very slowly... The laws have been left to one side a little while government deals with bigger priorities.”