Krakow Was Poland's Smog Capital; After Bans On Coal And Wood In Home Heating, 6,000 Lives Saved In 10 Yrs

[hatrack]

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Kraków, long known as the smog capital of Poland, is proof that politicians wield the power to save lives by cleaning the air. A drop in soot levels since 2013, when the city announced it would ban coal and wood in home heating, has averted nearly 6,000 early deaths over a decade, according to an expert assessment shared exclusively with the Guardian. Mazur’s research has separately shown that there were 17% fewer cases of asthma and 28% fewer cases of allergic rhinitis in children in 2018 than in 2008.

Anna Dworakowska, a co-founder and director of Polish Smog Alert, said: “It’s a huge improvement.”. Polish Smog Alert is a network of campaign groups that began in Kraków and led a nationwide push to improve the quality of Poland’s air. “Little more than 10 years ago, we had about 150 days a year with too-high concentrations of particulates in Kraków. Now it’s down to 30,” Dworakowska added.

Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels came into effect in 2019, by which point most of the tens of thousands of dirty stoves and boilers had been replaced. The local government subsidised the switch to cleaner forms of heating, sometimes paying the full cost, and restricted which fuels could be burned in the years leading up to the ban.

The reduction in soot – known as black carbon – saved 5,897 lives over a decade, according to the European Clean Air Centre. The researchers used established methods to calculate the death toll and relied on a special station in Wrocław to estimate the fraction of black carbon in the tiny particulate matter (PM2.5) they measured in Kraków.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/20/krakow-smog-poland-saved-lives-black-carbon-green-iniatives

[NNadir]

1. Poland typically has the highest carbon intensity for electricity in Europe, followed by Germany...

...and some of the Balkan States.

I check it regularly. It's not unusual to see figures as high as 800 grams of CO₂ per kWh. Their grid is coal intensive.

They frequently export electricity to Germany.

They plan to do something about their carbon intensity however, going nuclear. Every coal plant shut there will be replaced by nuclear whereas every nuclear plant in Germany was replaced by coal or gas.

When Poland finishes going nuclear they can join France in trying to restrain the filth of German electricity. For now exports of electricity to Germany makes things worse, not better.