Last Wednesday as my cycling partner rounded 25th may sports centre on our way to our Ada circuits we both noticed a yellowish type mist hanging over the Danube near Zemun.
I remember thinking it was either smoke from a fire in Zemun or dust thrown up by a cement barge. Little did we know that it was in fact a cloud of poisonous gas from the nearby industrial hell-hole town of Pancevo, east of Belgrade. A mistake at the Azotara nitrate factory led to the release. During the bombing NATO hit the same facility causing a massive environmental crisis in 1999.
Pancevo is the most polluted place in Europe, where they actually have sirens to warn people of Pollution Alerts.
Belgrade is not much better. Atmospheric pollution, heavy metal pollution in the rivers and severe noise pollution in the city are all critical environmental issues blighting Belgrade.
The air, land and water in Serbia is full of ammonia, iron, manganese, methane, carbons and carbon dioxide, say experts.
Chemistry expert Rade Biočanin says that the causes of pollution are numerous—from local ecological disasters, to the global situation.
“We can start first and foremost with urban pollution, such as traffic, and physical pollutants, such as noise. Then production—sadly, our factories don’t work as well as they once did, so there’s less industrial pollution, but there’s waste. We need to keep an eye on that in terms of the ratio and parameters that affect us,” Biočanin explained.
The most common consequences of pollution are lung problems, allergies and a rise in malign illnesses.
Waste, whether it’s chemical or nuclear, is one of the most serious pollutants and is a problem that requires an urgent solution, thinks Miodrag Pantelić, a professor at the Technology Faculty in Čačak.
“I think we devote very little attention to this, we leave it to the next generation. They should solve the problem of nuclear waste, we’ve not done anything there. That sort of waste is harmful in terms of both bacteria and viruses, pollutes our land and water, and enters our bodies via the food chain, so that our bodies are polluted,” Pantelić said. [Source]
[From B92 - News - Society - Press: Acid poisons Belgrade air and Belgrade 2.0 ]
PS. That same day there was an attempted suicide. We cycled past people videoing the incident, but could not see what they were filming. I presumed it was the poison cloud,but it was the jumper, who thankfully did not jump.
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