7 ms·
Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
- teekert 8mo agoI love Poland, love the people. In many towns though (ie I was in Bielsko-Biała recently) it smells like many things run on coal (like residential heating).
- thala 8mo ago[dead]
- danduma 8mo agoBut... how?
- fragebogen 8mo agoAssuming 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.
- gregorygoc 8mo agoWrong assumption, it’s been that way long before the energy crisis started.
- timeon 8mo agoWhy 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/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/
- nephihaha 8mo agoPolish coal is said to have a high sulphur content which won't help either.
- scotty79 8mo agoSulfur can counteract warming (although not the carbon dioxide itself obviously). There was a brief period, right before the world stepped back from releasing sulfur into the atmosphere, when our carbon dioxide emissions were completely countered by our sulfur emissions, when it comes to global temperatures only.
- pjc50 8mo agoSoviet Union was unwilling to put nuclear that far west, and then after Chernobyl most nuclear construction was cancelled.
- js8 8mo ago> Soviet Union was unwilling to put nuclear that far west That seems wrong; Dukovany (and IIRC then-planned Temelin) were further to the west than most of Poland and operated just fine.
- scotty79 8mo agoBerlin's air quality is on par with what you find in the middle of the forest in Poland. I've done my measurements in both places.
- adrianN 8mo agoIn January Germany exported more than 900GWh, in December Germany imported about 1400, but Poland also imported 290.
- wewxjfq 8mo agoGermany's emissions fell by 13% since the energy crisis started. Driven by reductions in the energy sector. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/finale-daten-fuer-2024-emissionen-um-drei-prozent https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/finale-daten-fuer-2024...
- Mashimo 8mo agoBut coal and lignite power production in TWh in Germany went down over the last decades? [0] Are you saying Germany is importing form Poland who is using goal power plants? [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
- Moldoteck 8mo agoSo did fall both internal demand and german net exports
- Moldoteck 8mo agoGermany isn't importing that much. Keeping nuclear would have helped exporting more clean power, including to Poland but that's another topic
- brettermeier 8mo agoNot clean, nuclear is dirty as hell.
- Moldoteck 8mo agoNuclear is one of the cleanest sources of power, if not the cleanest period. It requires least mining and materials over lifecycle vs any alternative per KWh. It requires least land. It's final waste volume is similar to renewables while both sectors do create toxic waste that must be stored forever (used fuel in case of nuclear and forever toxic chemicals like arsenic/lead in case of renewables) Saying nuclear is dirty as hell means you either are ill informed or spreading lies on purpose To give an example with Germany, probably being outpaced only by Austria in hate for nuclear power. Germans are concerned about small amounts of nuclear waste that will be stored in deep geo stable facilities (just like onkalo, soon fosmark, terradura and alikes) but germans are perfectly fine having the biggest near surface facility for storing forever toxic and dangerous chemicals on the planet, Herfa Neurode. Not just that, many are unaware that having a repository longterm is still a must even if they don't have nuclear power at all, due to medical and research sectors
- brettermeier 8mo agoRead stuff, you polluter: https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/nuclearenergyisdirtyenergy2014.pdf https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/nuclearen...
- Moldoteck 8mo agoThank you for proving yet again how misinformed you are, up to even spreading some nonsensical links... Here, read these as a starting point Carbon Neutrality in the UNECE Region: Integrated Life-cycle Assessment of Electricity Sources-> https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20... Other stats too: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-less-mining-fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-... Or even from nrel https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf Or health impact in say Germany https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z Those guys in nirs are clearly some wannabe antinuclear influencers which are concerned about nuclear supply chain and it's overall impact but are fine with ren supply chain with even bigger impact. They seem to be concerned about CO2 impact of nuclear due to concrete but fail to mention lifecycle data per kwh as in links I've provided. They are concerned about radioactive waste but not concerned about other toxic chemicals like arsenic. They are concerned about tritium when it's a low level emitter which you can drink and occurs naturally due to the sun. Most releases of tritium, including in Fukushima are below WHO limits. They are even concerned about some french units going offline during summer due to heat, but fail to mention even then France is top net exporter on the continent, avg heat impact affecting about 0.18% of production per year. They also fail to mention this is happening in units without cooling towers and edf isn't fixing it precisely because there's no financial value- France is exporting like crazy in this period - can check the data this summer on energy charts for confirmation. The 'article' is written in a childish manner by someone cherry picking everything to confirm own bias I heavily recommend you to look at this topic pragmatically instead of listening to some influencers like in your link or even greenpeace which did even more damage to the environment. Germany now is suffering due to such antinuclear movements. Not only more people died due to coal still being used, but existing nuclear fleet was cheapest firm power on the grid based on merit order data, while receiving significantly less subsidies than renewables. In fact, per official bundestag inquiry and later a parliament inquiry in Bavaria, nuclear in Germany didn't receive special subsidies for production at all, unlike renewables with EEG, which alone already outpaced the cost of all french nuclear fleet And naming me a polluter just confirms your bias and unwillingness to be informed about the topic, only to attach labels to people with different point of view
- gregorygoc 8mo agoIt’s in the valley and because Polish state is kinda weak they cannot enforce nearby villages to stop burning garbage to heat their homes.
- PunchyHamster 8mo agoat least try to hide your racism
- inglor_cz 8mo agoLOL, there is nothing racist about it, neither Poland nor Czechia are really into environmental enforcement against individuals, and you can definitely smell it in winter. As of now, "small sources of pollution" (e.g. mostly individual homes) are at least comparable to industry when it comes to releasing bad stuff into the air. I hate the acrid smell of burning plastic, but no one will do anything about it.
- Saline9515 8mo agoIt's the same in Latvia. Riga wants to set up a zero-emissions zone and a toll to enter the city center, but won't ban open stoves or solid fuel burning, which pollutes much more than cars in winter.
- TeMPOraL 8mo agoKraków just set up a clean transport zone; it went into full effect just few weeks ago. And people just can't shut up whining about it, even though it doesn't really put much burden on ~anyone. Most people drive petrol-powered cars (usually converted to support LPG, too), and the minimal norms for the clean transport zone are so low, it's hard to find a car that doesn't meet it. You can buy a used petrol-powered car with pocket change and it would already meet the norms.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoKraków badly needs a metro network, just like Prague and Warsaw have. That would alleviate the transport pressure a lot.
- kubb 8mo agoI think it’s topology (concave) + widespread poor heating methods in the agglomeration + a very bad day + inefficient combustion engines. I’d maybe include accurate measurements. The government isn’t trying to hide that and doesn’t have the means to, and highly quality sensors are widespread.
- nephihaha 8mo agoPlus continental, so it picks up dirty air from around.
- lostlogin 8mo agoCoal and cars? Looks like it clears up quite quickly.
- melting_snow 8mo agoDuring covid, when car traffic went to almost 0, the air quality was also extremely bad. Its mostly coal in the houses plus some people are not even using coal in their heating systems
- melting_snow 8mo agoThere are many houses in Poland that are using coal heating, and unfortunately a lot of people burn there their thrash. Kraków is surrounded by smaller towns and villages, where single family houses are common. To make things even worse, Kraków is in a basin, which makes the air flow even more difficult. If you add there years of city mismanagement when it comes to air flow, you land in such a situation
- egorfine 8mo agoDespite 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.
- asdff 8mo agoAre people not aware that is absolutely terrible for their health?
- margor 8mo agoCommon uneducated answer is: everyone needs something to die from. Same with cigarette smoking.
- TeMPOraL 8mo agoFreezing to death is even more terrible for their health. It's also much more immediate. And so is being poor. Breathing dust and smoke is a minor inconvenience in comparison. Any negative health effects will become noticeable in decades if at all. Doesn't help that most of the people responsible likely remember themselves or their parents breathing even worse stuff most their lives, with no ill effect being seen. Hell, it's one reason I myself considered air quality issues to be overblown - I don't perceive smog. I couldn't tell you whether it's bad or good air day in Kraków - I could only tell you when the air is too clean because I get sore throat then. I no longer consider air quality to be an overblown fad, but that's because I have small children and they start coughing non-stop when the air gets bad.
- Saline9515 8mo agoIt's not just poverty, but education about pollution and a common view in the post-communist countries that the common good (clean air in this case) isn't so important. It's the same with things like noise or graffitis for instance. In Latvia you commonly see rich people with BMW SUVs behaving like this. My friends see no problem with having coal barbecue or very heavy music in the center of Riga. We often have to remind new tenants in our building the benefits of sorting waste - and they are not poor.
- PunchyHamster 8mo agoI'd suspect just small amount of datapoints with maybe bias for people installing air sensors because that particular area's air quality is bad for whatever reason (near to road, neighbour have old coal boiler etc.)
- schiffern 8mo agoFrom this source: https://www.iqair.com/mx-en/newsroom/krakow-among-top-10-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world-10-16-2025 https://www.iqair.com/mx-en/newsroom/krakow-among-top-10-mos... "Krakow’s pollution stems from a mix of local and regional sources. A primary culprit is domestic heating, the burning of coal and wood in older, inefficient household boilers and stoves remains widespread in the Małopolska region (1). Car traffic also adds nitrogen oxides and fine particulates, exacerbated by an ageing vehicle fleet. Topography and meteorology worsen the problem, Krakow sits in a basin-like region prone to temperature inversions and limited ventilation, allowing pollutants to accumulate. Additionally, emissions drift in from surrounding municipalities and industrial zones, making regional coordination crucial to air quality. Despite a solid-fuel ban in the city since 2019 and the replacement of many coal boilers, compliance is uneven and some residents still use banned fuel."
- melting_snow 8mo agoThe issue with solid-fuel ban is that its banned only inside of the city itself, not in the surrounding towns
- dwedge 8mo agoThere isn't much wind there at all so the pollution can't escape. I'm not saying this isn't the residents' fault, but it isn't entirely the residents' fault.
- scotty79 8mo agoIt's almost as if slowing down the transition away from coal for political and social reasons is not such a great idea.
- sojuz151 8mo agoThe air in Kraków is fine once you give it a good chew. I don't know why people are complaining.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoLOL, Slavic humor at its best :) I live in Ostrava, some 160 km away. Entire Upper Silesia is a bad place for air quality in winter, it can often be seen on continental maps as a sore red spot. Fortunately most of the coal burning is gone, but individual people still burn all sorts of shit in their homes. PET bottles etc.
- nephihaha 8mo agoIs it in a valley?
- inglor_cz 8mo agoThe official term is a Basin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrava_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrava_Basin We tend to suffer from "inversions" here, and way back in the coal times, the air quality used to be comparable to London during the Great Smog of 1953. Nowadays it is better, but still quite bad compared to rest of Europe. In December 2024, I traveled from Ostrava to Warsaw and back via train, so through both Czech and Polish Upper Silesia. The Silesian part of the journey was a pea-souper, like riding through a yellowish cloud. (Warsaw itself had crisp chilly air.)
- dmos62 8mo agoWarsaw 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 stinks of smoke.
- melting_snow 8mo agoBurning coal and wood wouldn't be that bad. Unfortunately its quite common that people burn their trash
- lm28469 8mo agoThey burn all kind of shit in very inefficient stoves, modern wood burning stoves are pretty clean
- Gravityloss 8mo agoI wonder how expensive it would be to get widespread usage of better stoves, heat pumps or co-generation + district heating with centralized gasified burning. Everything could be locally built. I don't know about electricity prices there either. Gas for heating is something every European nation should steer clear from, for strategic reasons.
- whatevaa 8mo agoVery expensive. If you want to invest, first step would be making inefficient houses efficient, aka insulation. Problem is that, a lot of older housing ventilation is built on it being leaky...
- trvz 8mo agoThe city of Szeged in Hungary did this recently. You can find some numbers from there.
- comboy 8mo agoI've been living there for 15years and it's the reason I've moved away. Frankly I love the city enough that I would sabotage my health for it. Not my kids health though. Asthma related problems in kids are widespreada and of course bad air quality is related to tons of other negative consequences. I wonder though how do they compute the number (is it average across points measured in the city?). Because within city borders air quality varies wildly. There are some regions where it is actually pretty good.
- exitb 8mo agoFew years ago Kraków has forbidden the use of solid fuels which improved the situation significantly. Days like today are happening much less often since then. Moreover, Kraków has probably one of the densest network of pollution sensors in the world, which is why we talk about it at all. There are places in Poland that are much worse off, but there's not that much data to back it up.
- scyzoryk_xyz 8mo agoMy understanding is that the problem is exacerbated by the shape of surrounding terrain and atmospheric conditions. I.e. the city is in a cavity and on cold days there is a mass of high pressure that pushes all the smog down. But you are correct I believe (hailing from Wro here) - there have been many countermeasures implemented and cities are packed with sensors. Only so much can be done.
- SSLy 8mo agoalso the neighbouring municipalities are still burning solid fuels, and the city can't do anything about that.
- jwr 8mo agoI might be wrong, but I thought the situation in Kraków improved significantly several years ago due to the efforts of local administration, so much that we were jealous here in Warsaw. Has it worsened again since then?
- dmytrokow 8mo ago> improved the situation significantly That's just yet another coping mechanism, I believe. I lived in Krakow in ~2015, and live there now. It's the same. It smells the same, it looks the same, the polution levels are the same, and the number of days like today in a year is the same.
- exitb 8mo agoThat's not what the data [1] says. [1] https://powietrze.malopolska.pl/aktualnosci/wyniki-pomiarow-nie-pozostawiaja-zludzen-malopolska-z-coraz-czystszym-powietrzem/ https://powietrze.malopolska.pl/aktualnosci/wyniki-pomiarow-...
- unglaublich 8mo agoFossil 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.
- praptak 8mo agoTo 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 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).
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoIt depends what you're burning and how you burn it. If you're burning gas, you're burning it either at the perfect fuel/air ratio or maybe just a little lean. You only get water vapour and carbon dioxide out. If you're piling up coal in a stove you're getting all sorts of crap out of the chimney, including radioactive dust. It's one of the reasons that cars have been fitted with catastrophic converters. These remove the CO and HC by reacting it with what little excess oxygen there is in the exhaust stream to turn it into carbon dioxide and water, and at the same time produce massive amounts of nitrogen oxides. It reduces the efficiency by quite a bit but that's okay because it's a tiny effect compared to turning a huge chunk of Africa into a toxic hellscape to mine the palladium and rhodium the catalyst uses. We'd have incredibly clean cities if we ran vehicles on propane instead of petrol, and in the UK there was a big push to do this about 25-30 years ago. Obviously this got a lot of pushback from the banks and car manufacturers, because it wasn't selling people enough debt. Don't adapt your existing car to run on clean fuel that's mostly burnt as production waste! Sell your dirty polluting petrol car that only gets 38MPG and buy this nice new Cleaner Greener Diesel that gets an incredible 39MPG! And all at only 14.7% APR! Profit before the environment, as always.
- ansgri 8mo ago
- my_throwaway23 8mo agoI used to live in Gdansk, and later Gdynia, and let me tell you - as soon as it's cold outside, people burn all kinds of shit at home, the air's so thick you can practically cut it with a knife. We theorized that the smog's mainly from residential burning of coal, but of course who know's what's in the stove. All I know, is that it smells really unhealthy, and the smoke coming out of houses is a deep, black colour, almost like oil.
- stratocumulus0 8mo agoUnfortunately this is our national mentality - no one can tell me what I should do, and if I get told to stop, I will double down just to piss off that someone who insulted my pride. The biggest enemy of a Pole is always their neighbor. One may suffocate in their own fumes, but what's important is that this loser next door dies as well.
- Aldipower 8mo agoI live in Germany and when I see a Diesel car with black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe it turns always out to be a Pole who removed the soot filter to save some Cents of Diesel.
- marqueewinq 8mo agoDanzig or war? (Hoi4 reference) Jokes aside, this sounds terrible. What are the policies in place to prevent this?
- anilakar 8mo agoLet me guess: an unusually cold winter and coal.
- SkiFire13 8mo agoAnd I thought Milan (19th) was bad
- agravier 8mo agoKabul, Manila and Amsterdam have an index of 0. I'm not sure how reliable this data is.
- jve 8mo agoWoah, most of Poland looks... bad https://www.google.com/maps/place/Krak%C3%B3w,+Poland/@50.4700686,19.429305,6.24z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x471644c0354e18d1:0xb46bb6b576478abf!8m2!3d50.0646501!4d19.9449799!16zL20vMDQ5MXk!5m1!1e9?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDExMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Krak%C3%B3w,+Poland/@50.47...
- praptak 8mo agoThere's an interesting coping mechanism (verging on the conspiracy theory) popular on some Polish forums, namely that the abysmal data comes from abundance of sensors combined with them being placed (by whom and why? here's where the conspiracy part kicks in) in the most polluted spots. Here's a debunk by a popular Polish fact checking portal (in Polish): https://demagog.org.pl/analizy_i_raporty/smog-nie-taki-zly-jak-go-czujniki-maluja-sprawdzamy-popularne-w-sieci-teorie/ https://demagog.org.pl/analizy_i_raporty/smog-nie-taki-zly-j...
- TeMPOraL 8mo agoUntil recently, I've been a smog-skeptic; I figured it must be an overblown issue, as regardless of what the digital sensors and pretty graphs say, having spent almost my entire life in Kraków, I never saw it, never felt it. Still don't. Air in Kraków feels perfectly fine to me. And every time I saw someone complain, it was because of "see the PM2.5 PM10 thru the roof omg zomg!", not any actual health-related issues or discomfort. What changed my mind about the whole thing was my kids. I may not feel the particulates in the air, but my kids do, especially my eldest daughter (who has early childhood asthma, in remission) - winter comes, particulates go up, they start coughing uncontrollably all day. Particulates go down, suddenly they're healthy again (+/- running nose). I have limited sympathy for conspiracy theories, and very little for those burning trash in their homes, but I do understand where the smog-skepticism comes from. I still remember when Krakowski Alarm Smogowy became a thing, winter 2012; back then, this felt like a huge fad pushed by young activists on the Internet.
- praptak 8mo agoI hear you but let me add that what you feel is not necessarily the good indicator. PM 2.5 does have the potential to trigger asthma & similar stuff but it also causes cancer and heart disease, neither of which can be felt (until it's too late anyway).
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Oleh_h 8mo agoJust check the air quality in small cities around Poland. The air quality is twice as bad as in Kraków. Around 450 mg/m2
- rfarley04 8mo agoI 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
- brokegrammer 8mo agoHow long have you lived in BKK for, and has your health deteriorated because of the pollution?
- rfarley04 8mo agoI've been here since 2015 with the pm2.5 getting noticably worse from 2017 onwards. Hard to tie it to any degradation in health. I have air purifiers at home and wear N95 whenever I go out and it's bad. I know there were a few big studies around the prevalence of cancer rates that correlated with the pollution getting worse in China. But I'm not nearly qualified enough to comment on or vet those
- brokegrammer 8mo agoCool. I'm also interested in moving to BKK soon and was seeing a lot about the pollution there. I guess I'll see for myself when I get there.
- piokoch 8mo agoFunnily enough, Kraków region has the longest live expectancy in Poland (see https://stat.gov.pl/en/topics/population/life-expectancy/life-expectancy-in-poland-2024,2,18.html 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/krakow 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.
- madjam002 8mo agoYou can look at any air quality website and source of information and see that the air quality here is utter crap. If not IQAir, you can use Windy, WAQI, Airly (founded in Krakow, so lots of sensors here). I am in Krakow right now and my IKEA sensor is reading 183 µg/m³ when I put it outdoors. On a good day it's normally less than 5.
- danburzo 8mo agoKeep in mind this shows the “live most polluted major city ranking, 11:00–12:00” (EEST time), so rather short-term measurements.
- Youden 8mo agoThe page only lists 126 cities, with the bottom three having an AQI of 0. So the editorialized title is incorrect. It's not "top 5 worst air quality worldwide", it's only top 5 in this list, which is a small subset of the world's cities. It's a Swiss company but even Switzerland's largest city, Zürich, is missing. China sure as hell has more than 8 cities and Russia more than 2.
- jillesvangurp 8mo agoWe got a whiff of that in Berlin a few weeks ago when we got some cold wind from the east. Really noticeably bad air quality when I went outside to enjoy the snow and the cold. When I checked the map, I saw that we are basically getting Poland's pollution blowing our way. Most of the time the winds blow from the west and it's fine. Berlin has a bit of traffic but not a lot of coal plants or industry. It would be better if it got rid of a lot of the heavy diesel traffic in the city. That's slowly happening. But it's not that bad here most of the time. The point of pollution is that it stinks (literally) and is bad for your health. Pollution kills people, shortens expected life times by years, causes respiratory issues for children, etc. Those are some good reasons to do something about it. There are good alternatives to coal at this point. Mostly this is just inefficient legacy infrastructure that we pay extra for to keep going to "protect jobs". From a macro economic point of view, that stopped making sense quite some time ago. Which is why coal plants are going extinct in a lot of places. Even gas plants are a big improvement. I think of them as a stop gap solution that might be economically risky long term. Wind, solar, and batteries are cheaper. Maybe with some nuclear here and there (expensive but clean). However, gas plants are undeniably a pragmatic compromise between cost and polluting. Unlike nuclear they are easy to switch off when not needed and can act as a fallback solution when wind/solar fall short in the winter. LNG is not cheap though and that makes gas plants long term risky as renewables plus batteries marginalizes their use to the point where they are deeply unprofitable. There's a base load argument that often pops up in these discussions. Gas plants are nice because they can be switched off. Base load is basically the type of power that is expensive to switch off. Mainly coal and nuclear. This is actually problematic in a grid with a lot of intermittent power supply (wind/solar). Dispatchability is more important. Gas power is good because it is rapidly dispatchable. Batteries act as a buffer and minimize the need for gas plants to run.
- shevy-java 8mo agoThat's completely made-up. And also - nobody "smells" pollution from Poland in Berlin. Even AI would not generate this erroneous claim. > Maybe with some nuclear here and there (expensive but clean). And that's also made up. What is "clean" here? Radioactivity? Also if you refer to carbon cost, you have to calculate in EVERYTHING including mining and transport. So no, it is not clean - that is a lobbyist dream to claim otherwise.
- SenpaiHurricane 8mo agoI had a job offer there 8 years ago. When I visit there I saw pictures of people wearing masks to avoid bad air. Didn't take the job :)
- shevy-java 8mo agoI am sceptic of that listing. Normally, the bigger a city, the more waste it would accumulate. So why are almost all cities in China and India, ranked below? Save for two in India. Something is strange with that listing. Also if you do an image search on Google, Krakow is nowhere ugly or dirty. Yes, these images have a bias too, but compare it to the megacities in India. There is just no comparison here.
- madjam002 8mo agoThe PM2.5 in Krakow is currently 185 µg/m³, the WHO recommended annual average is 5 µg/m³. This is about air quality, not waste on the streets.
- pranavkpr 8mo agoThe list appears to contain some inconsistencies. For example, Jaipur, India has an AQI of approximately 175, yet it does not appear in the top rankings, despite being larger in both population and geographic size.
- harmonics 8mo agoIQAir has shit coverage. I live in Kazakhstan in a city at the eastern part of the country, near the border with Chinese Xinjiang, where PM2.5 levels regularly exceed 1000 µg/m³ (that's right, it's not a typo). The highest concentration I've seen this winter is 1900 µg/m³ just a couple of days ago. SO₂ pollution is also extreme, with levels of 1000 µg/m³ being exceeded on a regular basis, and 5000-8000 µg/m³ not unheard of. Yes, I am sure of these numbers, it's not a typo. Right at this moment there's some wind and the pollution has somewhat subsided, but it won't last: it's an exception. For example, the average PM2.5 concentration over the last month is around 250 µg/m³, depending on the exact place. We have extensive network of air sensors, but it's not currently public (it only started working a couple of months ago and is in the process of being made available to the public). I can only recommend looking at https://aqicn.org https://aqicn.org, which has much better coverage than IQAir, and speaking of our country specifically, it collects data from our old sensors provided by the government. Disregard anything that looks suspicious (some of the sensors are not working and show zero levels of pollution -- they're simply broken). My city is the worst one, but actually most Central Asian cities have terrible air quality due to harsh winters and outdated heating methods with zero emission control. Much, much worse than anything in Poland or Europe generally. You won't see them on IQAir because AFAIK they mostly collect data through their own sensors, which are expensive and not used here.
- mykowebhn 8mo agoA Kazakh city in the eastern part of the country, near the border with Xinjiang. That's Almaty, right?
- harmonics 8mo agoNo. I would have mentioned Almaty as it's big enough so that at least some people would have heard about it. I'm in this dump: https://aqicn.org/station/@517492/ https://aqicn.org/station/@517492/ Almaty also has terrible air quality, but looking both at averages and extremes, it's about 3-4 times cleaner than this place. As I said, it currently looks okay due to some wind, but it's a short abnormality and the first relatively clean "window" for the past ten days. Look at this station's history and you'll see conditions more typical for this region. Even historical data shows "only" 310 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but this is also misleading. The new network includes 26 more accurate stations spread all over the city, but the public portal for these data is being worked on. Hopefully next time this subject comes up on HN I'll have something to link to. Several of the nearby stations are simply not working and always show zero. All I'm trying to say is that using IQAir data to rank anything global is exceedingly misleaing.
- docdeek 8mo agoLyon, France is occassionally right up there too. If the weather (mostly the wind) is right/wrong we can shoot right up the ranking thanks to the geography of the surrounding region.
- janlucien 8mo ago[dead]
- niemandhier 8mo agoPoland has stronger economic development than the rest EU at the moment. I’d hazard to guess that part of it is that they accept being on the “don’t over regulate, but grow” path.
- 0rzech 8mo agoIt was mostly buying votes with money from ETS instead of spending those money in whole on energy transformation as intended.
- 0rzech 8mo agoDespite Międzyzdroje (zachodniopomorskie, Poland) lying directly at the seaside, the air quality in winter is so bad it literally irritates the throat and can even give you headaches or make you nauseous, and only directly on the beach can you still breathe fresh air. The common argument is that people use bad furnaces or burn bad fuel or trash out of poverty, but far too often the actual cause is mentality and not financial issues. Smog kills around 40,000 Polish people each year. [1] It was reported in 2025 to be 20 times more than in car accidents. [2] On the bright side, industrial and post-apo art fans can wear breathing masks in Poland without even pretending. [1] https://pulsmedycyny.pl/medycyna/choroby-ukladu-oddechowego/40-tys-tyle-osob-w-polsce-co-roku-umiera-z-powodu-smogu-znajdujemy-sie-w/ https://pulsmedycyny.pl/medycyna/choroby-ukladu-oddechowego/... [2] https://www.infor.pl/prawo/nowosci-prawne/6826105,umiera-od-niego-20-razy-wiecej-ludzi-niz-w-wypadkach-drogowych-wspolsprawcy-smogu-grozi-nawet-5000-zl-grzywny-gdzie-zglosic-smierdzacy-dym-z-komina.html https://www.infor.pl/prawo/nowosci-prawne/6826105,umiera-od-...
- impish9208 8mo agoI see your wintertime air pollution in Krakow and raise you Ulaanbaatar. It gets so bad that there’s a marked increase in miscarriages in the winter months.
- sevennull 8mo agogd, right up there with the best of them. Congrats
- tsoukase 8mo agoWhere I live, in nearby villages of 300-500 people living in sparse uninsulated family homes you can almost faint from air pollution (temps at +-0C). Wood (>10tn per 100sqm) or coal can severely impact the local environment. So a dozen dirty chimneys are enough let alone thousands of people allowed to burn anything flammable. No industry can rival this.
- nipperkinfeet 8mo agoI can't blame them. They're having a harsh winter. What else can villages do to keep warm without some eco-friendly nonsense that doesn't work?
- avaika 8mo agoiqair has pretty sparse coverage, especially in developing areas. A lot of places with really shitty air do not hit the top simply cause the service is effectively blind in those places. However, I regularly see a lot of Balkan cities hitting the top 10. Sarajevo was #1 quite a few times. Not sure whether it's really worse than Delhi or Beijing, but sometimes it's really really bad. Like, if you imagine the most smoky bar you ever visited, where you see nothing but the cigarette smoke and can't breath. That's how you feel on the street.