Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide • Hacker News Board

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#51

Post by dmos62 » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC

madjam002 wrote: post #35

dmos62 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your gauge for bad is, but low-temperature burning of coal and wood, which is what you get with cheap wood heaters, produces smoke that is definitely polluting and unhealthy. You can get a wood burner that re-burns well and is very efficient and burns the smoke so completely that you mostly get CO2 and water vapor coming out of the chimney, but they're expensive. Care to share more about trash burning?…

I was travelling a lot a couple of days ago across the countryside just outside of Krakow, and people are definitely burning plastics and trash, you can smell it even inside your car in the early hours of the morning. It's coming from the surrounding areas, not the city itself.

A bit sad to hear, I expected Krakow suburbs to be better off.

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#52

Post by weird-eye-issue » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC

madjam002 wrote: post #35

dmos62 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your gauge for bad is, but low-temperature burning of coal and wood, which is what you get with cheap wood heaters, produces smoke that is definitely polluting and unhealthy. You can get a wood burner that re-burns well and is very efficient and burns the smoke so completely that you mostly get CO2 and water vapor coming out of the chimney, but they're expensive. Care to share more about trash burning?…

I was travelling a lot a couple of days ago across the countryside just outside of Krakow, and people are definitely burning plastics and trash, you can smell it even inside your car in the early hours of the morning. It's coming from the surrounding areas, not the city itself.

Also one thing to note is that if pollution is bad in general then nearby fires and local sources of pollution will be much more noticeable. At least in my experience it seems to keep the pollution closer to the ground. Like if you are walking around a city with a lot of traffic on a day with bad pollution you will basically smell car exhaust all day whereas on days with low pollution even with the exact same amount of cars it will be much less noticeable.

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#53

Post by Saline9515 » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #20

PunchyHamster wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least try to hide your racism

LOL, there is nothing racist about it, neither Poland nor Czechia are really into environmental enforcement against individuals, and you can definitely smell it in winter. As of now, "small sources of pollution" (e.g. mostly individual homes) are at least comparable to industry when it comes to releasing bad stuff into the air. I hate the acrid smell of burning plastic, but no one will do anything about it.

It's the same in Latvia. Riga wants to set up a zero-emissions zone and a toll to enter the city center, but won't ban open stoves or solid fuel burning, which pollutes much more than cars in winter.

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#54

Post by trvz » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #39

lm28469 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They burn all kind of shit in very inefficient stoves, modern wood burning stoves are pretty clean

I wonder how expensive it would be to get widespread usage of better stoves, heat pumps or co-generation + district heating with centralized gasified burning. Everything could be locally built. I don't know about electricity prices there either. Gas for heating is something every European nation should steer clear from, for strategic reasons.

The city of Szeged in Hungary did this recently. You can find some numbers from there.

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#55

Post by Symbiote » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #23

melting_snow wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning coal and wood wouldn't be that bad. Unfortunately its quite common that people burn their trash

They burn all kind of shit in very inefficient stoves, modern wood burning stoves are pretty clean

If the somehow-trendy wood-burning stove a friend has recently had installed in the UK is anything to go by — and it was expensive — then "pretty clean" is relative. The air stinks outside his house, and the air stinks inside his house. I don't understand the appeal at all.

I was shocked on a recent trip to England where there was the smell of wood smoke in suburbia.

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#56

Post by praptak » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

jve wrote: post #44

Woah, most of Poland looks... bad https://www.google.com/maps/place/Krak%C3%B3w,+Poland/@50.47...

There's an interesting coping mechanism (verging on the conspiracy theory) popular on some Polish forums, namely that the abysmal data comes from abundance of sensors combined with them being placed (by whom and why? here's where the conspiracy part kicks in) in the most polluted spots.

Here's a debunk by a popular Polish fact checking portal (in Polish): https://demagog.org.pl/analizy_i_raporty/smog-nie-taki-zly-j...

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#57

Post by victorbjorklund » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:22 AM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #17

Warsaw is top 15, Krakow and Warsaw are the only European cities in the top 15. For some added context, it's around -10 degrees celcius there right now. I don't know why Poland stands out here, but I know that older residential areas burn wood (in other Eastern European countries as well), because that's just how you heat an old house: these neigbourhoods are horrible to walk through in winter, because the air just s…

Ukraine is part of Europe but not European Union

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#58

Post by Oleh_h » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:22 AM UTC

Just check the air quality in small cities around Poland. The air quality is twice as bad as in Kraków. Around 450 mg/m2

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#59

Post by Mashimo » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:23 AM UTC

fragebogen wrote: post #4

danduma wrote: post #2

But... how?

Assuming a large contributing factor is all the coal plants now running to sustain Germany's independence from nuclear? Berlin's air quality has also tanked a lot since the energy crisis started.

But coal and lignite power production in TWh in Germany went down over the last decades? [0] Are you saying Germany is importing form Poland who is using goal power plants?

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

#60

Post by Mashimo » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:24 AM UTC

Saline9515 wrote: post #45

egorfine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite government incentives and regulations some people burn garbage in stows. It's a local cultural thing and the state seemingly is powerless to do anything about it despite being the 20th economy in the world.

Out of curiosity, why would you burn your trash, and especially plastics? It smells and is clearly unhealthy and the caloric content is worthless compared to wood.

But it's free :)