PM promises to tackle air pollution

Prague, Jan 11 (CTK) - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) told journalists that his coalition government will "very intensively" deal with reducing air pollution, after a cabinet meeting that discussed the 2010 environmental report yesterday.

The annual report worked out by the Environment Ministry shows that air quality markedly worsened in the Czech Republic last year.

Necas said the data were alarming even though many of the high pollution levels were a result of weather conditions.

Nearly half of Czech population (48 percent) lived in areas with excessive concentrations of small airborne particulate matter in 2010, compared to 18 percent of the population in 2009, the report points out.

In the Ostrava area in northern Moravia and in the Kladno area, west of Prague, the levels of small airborne dust exceeded the limits in more than 100 days last year.

In urban areas, increased concentrations of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were measured.

The Environment Ministry recalls in its annual report that a new law on air protection was approved in 2010. It includes the introduction of low-emission zones in towns, banning the entry of older cars that do not meet emission limits.

The household fuel consumption increased last year, too.

The report says households have started to replace their old boilers with new ones within a subsidy programme aiming at lowering pollution in the Moravia-Silesia Region.

The industrial and coal-mining area in the Moravia-Silesia Region around Ostrava and Karvina is one of the most polluted localities in Central Europe. In October 2010, the European Commission threatened with suing the country over regularly exceeding airborne dust concentration limits in the Ostrava area.

According to the report, the energy consumption in transport has further increased, having nearly doubled over the past ten years.

Traffic also led to an increase in noise levels. In the cities of Prague, Brno and Ostrava up to 10 percent of inhabitants live in areas where noise limits are being violated.

The report also notes several positive trends, however. It points to the decreasing energy consumption of Czech industry, a long-term lowering of acidic emissions, and a marked fall in greenhouse gas emissions in 2008-2009.