Air pollution can have a serious impact on our health, so why aren't we doing more to combat it? An investigation in Poland.

The fight over air quality

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/12121448/m006-0017-en.srt

Late in the afternoon, a pungent odour  invades the city of Rabka

70 kilometres from Krakow  in southern Poland.

From the chimneys rise columns of smoke:

grey, black, yellow.  The smell is unpleasant.

The people have returned from work  and are heating their homes

with old stoves fuelled with coal – at best.

I don't have any other system,  I don't have gas,

so it's the only way that I can have heating.

It is cheaper than gas, that's why  many people in Rabka don't use gas

They change their gas stoves  to old coal stoves,

Not everybody is indifferent  to the combustion fumes.

Armed with a camera, Andrzej is filming.

I guess at this moment they are burning  maybe lignite, maybe lignite with trash.

You never know, but it smells quite bad.

When it is orange, something like that,  frequently it is trash.

For two years, Andrzej has campaigned  with a group of others

Poland is one of the European countries  with the highest levels of air pollution.

In particulate matter, over 50% of emissions  in Poland come from low stacks.

With benzo[a]pyrene  the situation is even worse.

Almost 90% of Poland's benzo[a]pyrene  emissions come from low stacks.

In this medical centre  they treat people suffering from pollution.

It's estimated that pollution causes 43,000  premature deaths per year in the country.

Being exposed to air pollution  for just an hour

can make even a healthy person's eyes  water or cause chronic coughing,

which often resembles an infection,  even if there are no other symptoms.

Also, chronic tiredness and headaches  or even sharp chest pain.

In Europe, 17 countries have reported  levels of fine particles that exceed the limits.

Infringement procedures have already been  initiated against the UK, Portugal,

Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Belgium,  Bulgaria, and more countries may follow.

In Brussels, the seat of the EU institutions,

the MEPs have long recognised  the health impact of air pollution.

Recently, the European Parliament  voted in favour of lowering the thresholds

of six major air pollutants  for the period 2020-2030.

The report from the Commission  reduces the ceiling,

so that reduces the amount that  each Member State is allowed to emit.

It varies by Member State and by pollutant,

but in effect for almost all of them  the number comes down.

The report from the Commission does that.

The Parliament's ambition is also to do that,

and then we have to  deal with Member States,

some of whom don't share  the same ambitions.

because it is, among others, they  who fix the air pollution standards:

in front of the European Parliament,  Louise is measuring fine particle pollution.

She works for an environmental association  and invites MEPs to follow her example.

There are obstacles, there is stonewalling  linked to pressure from lobbies of industry

and farmers that are very active in these  matters and have the ear of some MEPs.

Several reports, the one on COP 21,  but also the one on urban mobility

which still has not been voted on  by the Transport Committee,

because of stonewalling by rapporteurs  from Eastern European countries

who are against, because they feel  it will put their economy at risk.

Back in Poland,  this time in the city of Jordanów.

She is one of the few who have decided  to effectively fight air pollution in their city.

Using subsidies, she encourages people  to modernise their heating installations.

We replaced 70 coal stoves  in three months

using money from the Regional  Environmental Protection Fund.

We've introduced  a low-stack pollution cap programme

whereby the residents can claim  50% of their installation cost.

Poland is estimated to have  between three and four million

antiquated heating systems  in need of replacement.