The results of the Annual Air Quality Report, as interpreted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, show that air quality in Serbia in 2023 was slightly better than in 2022. This conclusion is based on the fact that, on one hand, the number of monitoring stations for key pollutants, such as suspended particles PM10 and PM2.5, has increased. On the other hand, there was a decrease in the number of monitoring stations where the threshold concentrations of these pollutants were exceeded.

However, the broader picture presented by this report, along with the parts of that picture which are still missing, prevents us from agreeing that air quality in 2023 was significantly better compared to previous years. What must be considered first is the fact that two new large urban areas Šabac and Kruševac  have been added to the list of cities with excessive pollution. Additionally, a significant portion of Serbia’s population still lacks reliable data on air quality.

Air quality assessment

In 2023, air pollution was considered excessive in as many as 13 cities in Serbia. These cities include: Subotica, Sombor, Kruševac, Pirot, Novi Pazar, Valjevo, Šabac, Kragujevac, Loznica, Čačak, Paraćin, Zaječar, and Kraljevo. Compared to the previous report, Kruševac and Šabac are the new additions to this list, while Kostolac and Zrenjanin no longer appear on it.

As in previous years, excessive air pollution was primarily caused by exceeding the threshold values for suspended PM10 and/or PM2.5 particles. These substances, along with concentrations of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, arsenic, lead, and other metals, remain the dominant sources of air pollution in Serbia.

Valjevo was the city with the largest exceedance of the annual PM10 limit value (60 µg/m3 compared to the allowed 40 µg/m3) and the city with the highest number of exceedances of daily limit values. In 2023, Valjevo recorded daily PM10 concentrations above the allowed limit on 149 days, nearly five times the permitted number of exceedances (35 days). Daily limit values for PM10 particles were exceeded at 60% of the monitoring stations across Serbia.

Kruševac and Šabac debit on the list of cities with excessive air pollution

Šabac has been classified as a city with excessive air pollution due to the high concentration of suspended PM10 particles, while in Kruševac, in addition to PM10, excessive concentrations of suspended PM2.5 particles have been recorded. This effectively means that there are "new" 110,000 residents who officially inhaled excessively polluted air in 2023. It's likely that they have been breathing such air in previous years as well, but only this year has official air quality monitoring, on an adequate scale, confirmed this. Šabac residents can now track real-time air quality data on the website of the local Institute for Public Health, while Kruševac citizens have no access to real-time data.

As cities in the third category of air quality, Kruševac and Šabac are obligated to create an Air Quality Plan, a key document designed to meet appropriate air quality limits and improve air quality in local communities. Whether and when these documents will be developed remains an open question. Given that cities classified in the third category of air quality for years still haven't adopted an Air Quality Plan, and that the adoption of these plans usually takes several years, it seems that Šabac and Kruševac face a long road ahead to find systemic solutions.

In 2022, the Ministry approved the Short-Term Air Quality Plan for Kruševac, two years after the City Administration of Kruševac requested the Ministry's approval for the plan. The pace of public policy development clearly does not match citizens' needs for addressing urgent issues, so it is likely that the Long-Term Air Quality Plan will also be delayed for several years.


Is the air in Zrenjanin and Kostolac really better than in 2022?

According to the latest report, Kostolac and Zrenjanin are now in the group of cities with Category I air quality, whereas just a year earlier, both cities were classified in Category III due to exceeding the limit values of suspended PM10 particles.

During 2023, Kostolac did not exceed the limit values for PM10 particles, but increased concentrations of other pollutants were observed. It is important to note that Kostolac is the only place in Serbia where the daily limit for sulfur dioxide (SO₂) of 125 µg/m³ was exceeded (this daily limit was exceeded once, out of the allowed three exceedances during a calendar year). Kostolac also recorded the highest hourly exceedances of sulfur dioxide concentrations, with 12 hours exceeding the allowed 24 hours.

This data is particularly significant considering the results from 2022, when no daily exceedances of sulfur dioxide were recorded in Kostolac, and hourly exceedances were observed only four times (three times fewer than in 2023).

Looking at the data on indicative measurements of heavy metals, in 2023, Zrenjanin exceeded the daily limit values for lead and the target value for arsenic, with significant measured concentrations of cadmium, indicating the presence of heavy metals in the air—something not recorded the previous year.

What Is happening with air quality monitoring in Sremska Mitrovica?

The air quality assessment in Sremska Mitrovica has been particularly interesting to follow. In 2018, the city was added to the list of cities with excessively polluted air. The following year, in the 2019 report on the air quality status in the Republic of Serbia, it was noted that the lack of measurements of suspended particles in January and February had led to an inaccurate picture, suggesting that the air quality was in the first category (i.e., good). However, when air quality was assessed for 2020, Sremska Mitrovica made it onto the list of cities with clean air, despite recording 48 days with exceedances of the daily limit for suspended PM10 particles. During that year, the air quality monitoring station, which measures the concentration of suspended PM10 particles, collected slightly less than the required percentage of data availability – 88% (the required minimum is 90%). This station falls under the jurisdiction of the local Public Health Institute.

In 2021, data collection from the same station decreased further (81%), and while fewer days exceeded the daily limit for suspended PM10 particles (36 days, compared to 48 in 2020), the city once again found itself on the list of cities with excessively polluted air due to the number of days with elevated PM10 levels. The 2022 air quality report did not include data from the aforementioned station, leading to Sremska Mitrovica being classified as a city with clean air that year, albeit without an adequate basis for this classification.

Finally, the latest report raises doubts once again. It includes data from the local monitoring station where no exceedances of the limit values were recorded, but the data availability stands at only 80%. Given all of this, it is reasonable to question how accurate the air quality classification is for Sremska Mitrovica, one of the few cities in recent years that has shifted from being classified as excessively polluted to being categorized as having clean air, despite inconsistent data and gaps in monitoring.

Nothing new in the agglomerations

All eight agglomerations have (once again) been classified in Category III of excessively polluted air: Novi Sad, Niš, Pančevo, Smederevo, Kosjerić, and Užice due to exceedances of the limit values for suspended PM10 and PM2.5 particles; Bor, due to exceedances of the limit values for dust, lead, cadmium, and arsenic; and Belgrade, where the air was polluted due to high levels of PM particles and nitrogen dioxide, just like in 2022.

During 2023, increased concentrations of PM2.5 particles were observed in Novi Sad, while nitrogen dioxide concentrations decreased in Niš. In Bor, lower concentrations of sulfur dioxide were recorded compared to 2022, which can be attributed to the temporary shutdown of the blast furnace at the smelting plant for maintenance.

A third of Serbia's population has no access to air quality data

Earlier than in previous years, the Environmental Protection Agency published its Annual Air Quality Report. The 2023 air quality report, which by law should be available to the public no later than 60 days after the end of the calendar year for the previous year, became accessible in mid-September this year. While this is an improvement compared to previous years when the report was released in November, the public is still waiting longer than the law mandates for official information on air quality.

Almost 2.5 million citizens of Serbia live in cities and towns that are not covered by air quality monitoring and have no data on the concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 particles to which they are exposed.

Although air quality monitoring has improved compared to last year in terms of the number of stations (55 more monitoring stations than in 2022) and monitoring sites (16 more than in 2022), there is still work to be done in expanding the network and establishing monitoring in cities where no data currently exists. This should go hand in hand with maintaining the existing stations to ensure a high level of data availability.


Photo credit: Belgrade Open School