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Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide

iqair.com

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

#61

Post by dmos62 »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #57
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

I know, haha. I rechecked the ranking: it updated. Now Warsaw is top 12 and Kyiv is top 13.

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

#62

Post by rfarley04 »

I live in Bangkok and we also get inversions during the "cold" (for Thailand haha) season, the same time that farms slash and burn, making this the worst time of year for our air quality as well.

It's much better this year but incredibly hard to police since officials often don't have jurisdiction where the pm2.5 originated, before getting trapped in the inversion

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

#64

Post by pjc50 »

timeon wrote: post #13
fragebogen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you jump to this conclusion? I wonder why some people on internet are repeating narratives like drones. Poland has largest use of coal in EU. Czechia and Germany are behind. Poland is including energy from sun and wind now a lot but there is still long way. Unlike surrounding countries they never had nuclear for some reason. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/

Soviet Union was unwilling to put nuclear that far west, and then after Chernobyl most nuclear construction was cancelled.

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

#65

Post by praptak »

unglaublich wrote: post #34

Fossil fuel heating is _extremely_ polluting, and really costing the population months, up to years of their life. But it's a silent killer, so let's dramatize fantasy nuclear accidents instead.

To be exact: the problem here is fossil fuel and wood being burned in inefficient furnaces/stoves/fireplaces where the fuel doesn't fully burn. There are efforts by the government to replace them but they aren't super effective yet (random example: https://um.warszawa.pl/kopciuchy).

For the industrial scale fossil fuel furnaces this problem is solved already (they are obviously still bad because of their huge CO2 emissions but that's a different problem).

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

#67

Post by mrmlz »

Symbiote wrote: post #55
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

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.

Poorly dried wood?

We just installed a second woodburningstove in our house, https://www.contura.eu/en-gb .. and i mean you can mess up your fire by burning wet wood etc. or... paper i dunno.

But dried wood burns really clean, absolutely no smell INSIDE the house (wtf?!) and outside you see a thin whisp of smoke from the chimney.

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

#68

Post by margor »

asdff wrote: post #41
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.

Are people not aware that is absolutely terrible for their health?

Common uneducated answer is: everyone needs something to die from. Same with cigarette smoking.

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

#69

Post by piokoch »

Funnily enough, Kraków region has the longest live expectancy in Poland (see https://stat.gov.pl/en/topics/population/life-expectancy/lif...).

Which is interesting, as either air quality does not matter that much or those data are just bogus.

Well, air quality matters probably, so we are left with the data. Let's check what is the origin of this information: https://www.iqair.com/poland/lesser-poland-voivodeship/krako...

6 stations. One from "corporate contributor" named Arek (common Polish first name, short from Arkadiusz so does not look like a big corp) plus 5 other individual contributors.

What equipment those 6 stations have? No idea. Are the instruments calibrated properly? No idea. Are they placed in the right spot, not on the balcony near the chimney? No idea. Are they placed evenly across Krakow to give reliable city-wide data? Looking on the provided locations - not really.

Iqair seems to "crowdsource" their measurements so they get "crowdsourced" data, which can be total crap. Do they even verify those data? How? No idea.

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