With the start of the heating season, there has been an extraordinary rise in the number of complaints received by the Clean Air Action Group from desperate residents who fear that they and their children could be at risk of getting a fatal disease from the burning of waste by their neighbours. Since the dangerous phenomenon spares no one, the environmental NGO is calling on the government to take immediate measures in a letter to Gergely Gulyás, the Minister of Prime Minister’s Office.

The fears of residents reporting residential waste burning are well-founded. Even smoke from wood-burning is extremely harmful to health: it contains a thousand times more health-damaging PM2.5 particles than the exhaust of a 17-year-old truck (per unit of energy produced). However, the burning of treated wood, plastic, tyres, baled cloths, and similar waste can result in up to thousand times more toxic compounds getting into anyone’s body than in the case of wood-burning. Now, with the flu and Covid epidemics on the rise, the danger is even greater, since research has shown that air pollution substantially aggravates the illnesses caused by these epidemics.

Although illegal burning is most dangerous for people living close to the burning, the resulting toxic substances enter everyone’s body. In Budapest, for example, particulate matter from residential waste accounts for up to 5 percent of PM10 particulate matter pollution.

Although illegal, residential waste burning is widespread in Hungary, but official action against it is rare and, even when it does occur, it is usually not a deterrent.

András Lukács, President of the Clean Air Action Group said: “We believe that with appropriate government measures, residential waste burning could be significantly reduced and that these measures would impose at least an order of magnitude less financial burden on the state budget than the fiscal damage caused by illegal burning of waste, in terms of additional burdens on health care and lost tax revenues due to disease. Businesses also suffer significant losses due to illness and premature deaths. It is also a threat to the health of tourists visiting Hungary.”

Judit Szegő, the organisation’s project manager, added: “According to surveys and our own experience, most of the air pollution caused by illegal residential burning is due to ignorance and irresponsibility. Thus, the government should conduct a large-scale awareness campaign on the same scale as its other campaigns on the harm caused by illegal waste burning and how residents can reduce their energy costs and air pollution from heating by simple methods such as learning to heat with wood properly.”

The Clean Air Action Group also recommends that the government make it mandatory for the police and local authorities to take legal action against those who burn illegally. (Today, only the environmental authorities have such a right, but they have no capacity to deal with the problem.) Furthermore, additional subsidies for heating should be provided for those in need, especially for those who can only heat with solid fuel.