Environmental pollution/Poor air quality endangers public health

2026-06-30 09:29:00, Aktualitet CNA

Environmental pollution in Albania has exceeded the dimensions of an ecological challenge, becoming a profound social and health emergency. Poor air quality is becoming a silent killer, directly affecting the standard of living and weighing on citizens' pockets. This situation is greatly suffocating large residential centers, where the spread of concrete, the reduction of parks and heavy traffic of vehicles outside standards have blocked the natural purification of oxygen.

Figures from international institutions provide a dramatic picture of our situation. According to official estimates from the European Environment Agency, constant exposure to polluted air causes around 2,000 premature deaths each year in our country. Continuous measurements show that the level of the most dangerous particles for the lungs, known as PM 2.5, in cities such as Tirana, Elbasan or Fier, exceeds the safety limit norm set by the World Health Organization several times.

This invisible danger in the air translates directly into a daily influx of patients to hospitals, turning into a real social drama. The white shirts report a continuous and worrying increase in cases of serious pathologies, where bronchial asthma, respiratory infections and cardiac complications predominate. The heaviest burden of this environmental degradation falls on the most vulnerable groups: the little ones who develop breathing problems from an early age and the elderly who face chronic health deterioration.

In addition to the physical suffering, this crisis carries a strong financial blow that hurts the weak economy of families. Middle- and low-income groups are forced to spend a large part of their monthly budget on oxygen machines, long-term care and anti-allergy medications. According to public health experts, the true cost of this situation will not be calculated only in monetary value, but in the damage to the quality of life of future generations, if urgent measures are not taken to clean the air. /CNA