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POLLUTION

This map shows the most polluted streets in Germany

The Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) on Tuesday issued its annual report on the quality of German air. These ten streets came out worst.

This map shows the most polluted streets in Germany
Photo: DPA

Munich and Stuttgart are closely associated in many people's heads with cars. As the homes of the BMW and Mercedes brands, they are known around the world for building some of the finest automobiles money can buy.

But people who pay attention to the latest report by the UBA may start to think of these cities as the places where cars are harming people's quality of life. Three of the ten most polluted streets in Germany are in Stuttgart, while one is in Munich, with diesel cars being blamed for the damage.

According to the UBA, the safe limit for nitrogen dioxide in the air is 40 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m³). But in two Stuttgart streets – am Nekator and Hohenheimer Straße – the UBA recorded average levels twice this high throughout 2016. 

In Landshuter Allee in Munich, the average nitrogen dioxide level was also 80 (µg/m³).

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Overall, measurements by the UBA show that in 2016, 57 percent of German streets with high traffic had levels of nitrogen dioxide that were higher than the safe limit.

“Nitrogen dioxide has been endangering our health for decades,” said UBA head Maria Krautzberger, adding that diesel engines were largely responsible for the health threat.

Krautzberger said that Germans “should not accept” that cities continue to allow polluting diesel engines to be driven through city centres.

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POLLUTION

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain’s ‘poisonous mega farms’

The “uncontrolled” growth of industrial farming of livestock and poultry in Spain is causing water pollution from nitrates to soar, Greenpeace warned in a new report on Thursday.

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'
Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

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