Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, is among world’s most polluted cities
The capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina has once again ranked among the world’s most polluted regions.
A man wearing a face mask to protect from air pollution crosses the street shrouded by pollution haze as smog covers Sarajevo, Bosnia on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. Photo: APSarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, declared a state of alert on Wednesday; the concentration of fine particles that afternoon was 47 times higher than the World Health Organization’s threshold.
According to IQ Air data, which measures global air pollution, the city’s air quality index hit 320.
Anything above 300 is deemed dangerous.
Pollution peaks are frequent in Sarajevo, a city surrounded by mountains where temperatures plunge in winter, home to more than 400,000 people.
“The biggest issue is individual heating,” said Anes Podic, head of the environmental organisation Eko-Akcija, adding that between 30,000 and 40,000 households use solid fuels, mainly wood.
“They burn damp wood in very poor quality stoves, and we end up with very high emissions.”
But the government “doesn’t want to solve the problem”, he said, and “as a consequence, we are often topping [pollution] black lists, alongside much larger cities of 10, 20 or 30 million inhabitants”.
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The effects of pollution on residents are well documented, including in the region.
According to a UN study published in 2019, air pollution was responsible for 20 per cent of all premature deaths registered in 19 Balkan cities; Balkan residents lose up to 1.3 years of life due to air pollution.
“I feel the symptoms, but I am so used to it, it’s almost a daily thing,” resident Ognjen Grujic, 46, told Agence France-Presse.
Air pollution, worsened by climate change, increases the risk of suffering from respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer.
“In Sarajevo, one out of 12 deaths is a result of lung cancer,” Podic said.
According to some experts, it has similar, possibly even more significant effects than smoking or alcohol consumption.
In Sarajevo, mountains are the only escape.
“It’s very hard to breathe and to live in Sarajevo during these smog episodes,” said 66-year-old retiree Senada Dzaka.
“Sometimes it stays like that for several days in a row, and it makes people depressed. It would be really difficult to live if we didn’t have the option to go to the mountain,” she said from the top of Mount Trebevic, gazing at the city wrapped in a thick cloud of smog.