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Campaign draws attention to filthy air in Swiss cities

The air quality in many Swiss cities is very poor and levels of a greenhouse gas exceed European emissions standards, according to an environmental organization.

Published: 11 January 2018 13:01 CET

Campaign draws attention to filthy air in Swiss cities

Photo: VCS

VCS has installed a display screen in the centre of the capital, Bern, to draw attention to the problem of high levels of nitrogen oxide in the air caused by heavy traffic, according to a news release.

The display turns red as soon as the level of the gas NOx in the air passes the year average of 30 micrograms per cubic meter. A green light indicates an emissions reading below the European limit.

The display screen has been installed outside Bern railway station in an area of dense traffic.

The actual emissions are measured 200 meters away at the Bollwerk measuring station operated by the Federal Office for the Environment.

According to the VCS, 22,000 people work in this “red district” of Bern. A further 200,000 people using the railway station are exposed to dangerous levels of the greenhouse gas every day.

VCS said that the situation in Bern was not unique in Switzerland and other cities also regularly measure unacceptably high emissions levels.

The poor air quality in many places has serious consequences for people’s health and the environment, it said.

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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