By Marton Dunai and Marton Monus
SAJONEMETI, Hungary (Reuters) – Zoltan Berki usually wakes up before dawn, sleeping with five small children next door, to feed the old iron furnace standing in a wall cavity to heat both rooms. It is the only part of his house he can afford to heat during the winter.
Come rain or shine, Berki, a stocky 28-year-old Roma man, drives an hour to work to save the bus fare, and he’s up anyway.
But he must also burn material before daylight, to hide the thick black smoke that coils from his chimney when he uses plastic or rubber. Such domestic pollution is illegal in Hungary, also in this city near the Slovak border.
People do it anyway. On a foggy winter day, dense smoke of different colors spits out almost every chimney. It stays low in the air and gradually fills the narrow valleys.
“Firewood is expensive,” Berki said this afternoon as his family played around him, crammed into a small room. “Either I buy wood or food. So I go to the forest or to the rubbish dump, and if we find plastic or rubber, we burn it.”
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled last week that Hungary has violated pollution limits in the Sajo River Valley, as well as other areas, for more than a decade, which could be the reason for financial fines unless reversed.
The ruling should be seen as a ‘wake-up call’, European Commission spokeswoman Vivian Loonela said.
The Hungarian government did not respond to a request for comment.
Although Hungary has reduced its carbon emissions in recent decades and is not the worst offender in Europe, the bags continue to be heavily polluted, and according to local residents and environmental rights groups, rules are rarely enforced.
The capital Budapest and the southern city of Pecs are also suffering, but the situation in the Sajo Valley, where pollution and poverty go hand in hand, is particularly dire.
In Berki’s house, the doors of the oven creak open by hand. Berki starts the flames and throws in a wooden plank or two to build up heat. Then he burns what he can. Plastic bottles, cut-up tires and window frames all work. An old shoe is often sufficient.
Search for material https://reut.rs/3tKI0wD to burn is common for the poorest people in the small, dilapidated city of Sajonemeti and the nearby, one of the poorest communities in Europe since the heavy industry from the communist period 30 years disappeared. ago, and left thousands unemployed.
Aware of the rules, avoid Berki burning fuel during the day.
“The neighbors can see, and you can smell it too,” he said. “We throw away the rubber and the plastic bottles and stuff like that at night.”
The valley forms a cul-de-sac and prevents wind when cold air enters, so that heavy smog can linger for weeks. Several such areas exist in Hungary, which according to the European Court of Justice contributes to thousands of premature deaths annually.
YEARS OF ALARM
Hungarian environmental groups have been sounding the alarm for years.
In 2020, Zsuzsanna F. Nagy, the most important environmental activist in northeastern Hungary, surveyed local people about their heating practices and found that some people burn rubbish, even those who tried to heat homes properly, often burning brown coal or other unsuitable coal products. for home use. .
This reflects the assessment of the Clean Air Action Group, a green organization in Budapest, which said that types of coal can vary widely, and by using the wrong ones, households can erase profits from the post-communist clean-up of the industry.
The gap between quality coal and low-grade alternatives could mean a 60-fold difference in particulate emissions.
In Hungary, a country of 10 million people, air pollution causes 13,000 premature deaths every year, one million people get sick and billions of euros are lost due to economic damage, said Judit Szego, project leader of Clean Air.
According to the European Environment Agency, Hungary ranks third in Europe behind Bulgaria and Poland due to health damage and loses 1,128 life years per 100,000 inhabitants annually due to pollution of particles, or small flying dust, alone – compared to about 500 in the UK or 250 in Sweden.
Air pollution can cause allergic reactions, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the National Public Health Institute said in 2017.
Berki’s five children all use inhalers because they suffer from asthma symptoms, he said. For his father, Zoltan Berki Sr., pollution means chest pain and coughing.
Elder Berki dug up the remains of coal by hand on Sunday – a common sight in winter.
The man-made heaps were littered with materials for incineration, including logs from the old railway lines that had been diesel fueled.
“Smokes like hell but burns nice,” he said as he piled up a few. “We collect what we find and take it home to burn. It gets pretty hot, and we can not afford to buy anything.”
(Additional reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels; edited by Mike Collett-White)