Healthcare and other costs relating to smog could reach EUR 30 billion annually, a report by Poland’s ministry for entrepreneurship has found.

Speaking at a press conference in Warsaw on Monday, Entrepreneurship Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz said: “We want to discuss this phenomenon continuously and not just when alarm levels are exceeded.”

Emilewicz added that the discussion was timely, “now that [Poles] are taking decisions on the purchase of fuel for winter and doing renovation works in their households,” Poland’s PAP news agency reported.

According to the report, last year saw nearly 19,000 Poles die from causes linked to air pollution from vehicle emissions as well as dust particles and hazardous gases from small-scale coal-fired boiler plants and heaters, PAP said.

Emilewicz told reporters that the ministry’s next step in fighting air pollution in Poland would be the ZONE project, an integrated support system bringing together anti-smog policies and programmes.

The undertaking will be run jointly with several institutions such as the National Center for Research and Development and the Polish Smog Alarm NGO.

Emilewicz added: “The project aims … to provide improved monitoring of air quality, to list households and determine their heat storage capacity.”

Another goal of the project is to “carry out the largest-yet pulmonary function testing survey [in the country] covering 25,000 Poles inhabiting nine cities with a record of poor air quality.”

(aba/vb)

Source: PAP