“Here in Zenica we’re all sick, just some don’t know they’re sick but.”

Those had been the phrases of an activist I met on my first journey to Bosnia in 2019. Two years later, he died of lung most cancers. That was when — and largely why — this venture began.

Zenica, a metropolis of roughly 100,000 individuals some 70 kilometers north of Sarajevo, is among the most polluted cities in Bosnia. The essential supply of air pollution, in response to Eko Forum, an area environmental group, is a big metal plant owned by AcelorMittal. The plant, which is sort of as massive as the town itself, produces power by burning coal.

The state of affairs has residents within the metropolis and surrounding areas frightened about their well being and their future.

Alma, who lives in Tetovo, a village not removed from the commercial heart of Zenica, stated she moved to the realm after she married, greater than 4 many years in the past. “At that point, many individuals labored within the manufacturing unit, however immediately the state of affairs is horrible. Within a 300-metre radius of my home, everybody has most cancers.” She was identified with abdomen most cancers herself in 2021.

This isn’t just a narrative of Zenica, and even Bosnia, however extra broadly of the Central Balkans, the place numerous cities and cities face closely polluted air attributable to outdated coal industries and energy vegetation, open-cast lignite mines and ash dumps. 

According to a Human Rights Watch report, Bosnia has the fifth highest variety of deaths from air air pollution on the planet. Concentrations of pollution within the area — which is dwelling to seven of the ten most polluting coal-fired energy stations in Europe — are 5 instances greater than the bounds set by the EU, the U.N. Environment Program has discovered.

In the years I explored the commercial cities of Zenica, Tuzla, Banovici and different locations saddled with air pollution, I found a exceptional nation, scarred by warfare however resolutely hopeful that changing into a member of the EU will enhance a poisonous environmental panorama and usher in a brighter future. 

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