The IQAir portal has consistently graded Sarajevo's air quality as "very unhealthy" or "hazardous" over the week, making the Bosnian capital the most polluted city in Europe.
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00:00A blanket of fog and smog descended on the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo this week,
00:06reducing visibility to a few dozen metres and forcing residents indoors
00:11as pollution levels surged to hazardous levels.
00:15Only India's New Delhi clocked worse air quality on Wednesday, according to the IQ Air portal.
00:21The ranking put Sarajevo as the most polluted city in Europe,
00:26with Skopje in north Macedonia the next worst at number 10,
00:30even though the pollution situation in Sarajevo had gradually improved towards Friday.
00:56It's hard to breathe in the air, I went to work with a mask on in the morning,
01:00I'm afraid for my child, who is engaged in sports activities,
01:04it's very difficult to train at all in these conditions,
01:08I'm also afraid for my parents, because it's very difficult to deal with anything under this air.
01:16And that air, of course, enters the inhabitants of Sarajevo,
01:20and makes that air completely polluted.
01:26This is the problem of Sarajevo, by the way,
01:28and it can only be solved by eliminating the use of fossil fuels
01:34and reducing traffic in Sarajevo,
01:38which is congested due to the fact that the road infrastructure
01:45cannot accommodate all the number of cars driving on the Sarajevo streets.
01:51The IQ Air portal ranked Bosnia and Herzegovina at number 27
01:57in the most polluted countries ranking during the period of between 2018 and 2023.
02:04This made the country the most polluted in Europe.
02:08With a population of about 315,000,
02:12Sarajevo has almost no polluting industries,
02:14as they were destroyed during Bosnia's war in the 1990s.
02:18But the city has long suffered from temperature inversion,
02:22which presses colder air and pollutants from vehicles
02:26and fossil fuels closer to the ground.
02:29The government has pledged to ban older cars and suspend school classes
02:33and outdoor gatherings when air quality deteriorated.
02:42For more UN videos visit www.un.org