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The Guardian reveals that 98% of Europeans breathe highly polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year.
Europe is facing a "serious public health crisis", with almost everyone across the continent living in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, an investigation by The Guardian has found.
Analysis of data collected using the latest methodology that includes detailed satellite imagery and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations revealed a dire picture of polluted air, with 98% of people living in polluted areas of very harmful fine particles that exceed world health.
Almost all residents in Albania, Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary live in areas where air quality is more than double WHO guidelines.
According to the map of "The Guardian", Tirana together with Elbasan, Kukës and Shkodra were the cities with the highest pollution with more than 19 micrograms registered.
The most polluted country in Europe is North Macedonia. Almost two-thirds of people across the country live in areas with pollution more than four times the WHO guidelines, while four areas were found to have air pollution almost six times the permitted figures, including the capital Skopje .
Eastern Europe is significantly more polluted than Western Europe, except for Italy, where more than a third of those living in the Po Valley and surrounding areas in the north of the country breathe air that is four times higher than the WHO figure -s.
The Guardian worked with pollution experts to produce an interactive map revealing the worst-hit areas on the continent. The measurements refer to PM2.5, which are tiny airborne particles produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, some of which can pass through the lungs and directly into the bloodstream, affecting almost every organ in the body.
Current WHO guidelines state that annual average concentrations of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m 3 ). The new analysis found that only 2% of Europe's population lives in areas within this limit. Experts say PM2.5 pollution causes about 400,000 deaths a year across the continent.
"This is a serious public health crisis," said Roel Vermeulen, a professor of environmental epidemiology at Utrecht University, who led the continent-wide team of researchers that compiled the data. "What we see quite clearly is that almost everyone in Europe is breathing unhealthy air."
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