Pollution in Tetovo

Today I woke up, looked out my window, and for the first time in weeks was able to see the mountains less than a mile from my house. I walked outside and the air just felt clean. It's a spectacular feeling. It's like when you live in Seattle, and it's been months of nothing but dreary and finally the sun comes out and it's warm and everyone is walking around a little drunk on all the Vitamin D. That's what it feels like to me today. My lungs feel sooo good. This is the first day in ages where I don't feel like I'm being poisoned just by walking outside. Yeah...the pollution has been bad here.

How bad?

Pollution levels in Ulaanbataar

Pollution levels in Beijing

Bad enough that the pollution nanoparticle concentration in Tetovo was almost 4 times higher than the winter average in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. Bad enough that it's 5 times worse than Beijing's worst pollution levels for January. This means that it's 70 times worse than the pollution in Seattle right now. It's worse here than the highest level ever recorded in Omak during a forest fire. 

PM10 refers to particulate matter that is smaller than 10 microns, or roughly 1/6th the diameter of a human hair. The World Health Organization recommends setting a legal daily average cap to PM10s at 50 nanograms per cubic meter per day. The US caps this at 150 nanograms per cubic meter per day. The Republic of Macedonia follow the WHO recommendations and sets a limit on the amount of days that a city can exceed that average of 50 ng/m3 at 35 days per year. Tetovo exceeded that daily average over 330 times last year. As I'm writing this, the air is at about 100 ng/m3...and I'm excited at how clean the air feels...when it's twice the legal limit. Joke as much as you want about Macedonia being Posh Corps...by the end of my service here my lungs will say something completely different. 

Here you can see out my office window to the local hospital, a distance of less than a city block. During the last week, I haven't even been able to see that from my office. That is how bad the smog has been here. 

The trick is that here, just as everywhere else, there is a high degree of politicization with just about any issue. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I need to steer clear of local politics, so I am being deliberately careful about not casting blame on any particular political party. Both here and in Skopje, local NGOs have been organizing protests of citizens in hospital mouth masks and military gas masks. I've had to distance myself from the actions because it's hard to predict whether I'd be seen as protesting the pollution (which I can do) or criticizing the government (which I can't do). In any case, the air is nice and clean(er) outside so I'm going to go out and enjoy it while it lasts.

(I know that PM25 is the much more harmful size of particle and thus the more important to measure, but the local Air Quality sensors in Tetovo don't measure PM25, so I've had to make do with PM10) 

Addendum: A local newsource on the cause of the pollution

I cannot emphasize enough that I am attempting only to document the existence of pollution levels in Tetovo and the region. I am providing this link for further information about the possible cause of pollution, I do not endorse any political opinions presented in the article.