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POLLUTION

Air pollution: France gets slapped with ‘final warning’ from EU

The EU has told France to tighten controls on smog-causing car pollution or risk being sent to the top European court.

Air pollution: France gets slapped with 'final warning' from EU
A smoggy morning in Paris. Photo: AFP
Heavy smog has enveloped much of Europe this winter prompting emergency measures in several big cities including London, Paris and Berlin.
 
And France has been no exception. In fact, France was one of five EU countries to get a “final warning” from the EU on the matter on Wednesday. 
   
“The European Commission sends final warnings to Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom for failing to address repeated breaches of air pollution limits for nitrogen dioxide,” the European Commission said.
   
The commission, the executive arm of the 28-country union, said it urged the countries “to take action to ensure good air quality and safeguard public health.”
   
EU countries can be hit with large financial penalties by the commission if they break the union's rules.
   
The commission said that “persistently high” levels of nitrogen dioxide caused 70,000 premature deaths in Europe in 2013.
   
This was almost three times the number of deaths by road traffic accidents in the same year, it added.
 
France's air pollution levels have proven to be a talking point this winter – especially in Paris, where it got so bad that city authorities introduced traffic restrictions and free public transport on several occasions. 
 
In response, Paris rolled out a new sticker system last month that is aimed to stop the most polluting vehicles from being on the roads when the air pollution is at its worst. 
 
Grenoble, a town in the south east where air pollution is particularly bad, is in the process of introducing a similar system. 
 
 
 

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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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