(by Stefano Giantin) (ANSA) - BELGRADE, JUNE 25 - Environmental associations and experts have launched a warning about an "air pollution crisis" affecting the Bosnian city of Tuzla, asking authorities to scrap plans to build a new coal power plant in the town. Dust pollution in Tuzla has been "twice the legal limit on two thirds of monitored days in 2018 and caused over one hundred premature deaths in adults during the year," CEE Bankwatch Network, the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) and the Center for Ecology and Energy in Bosnia and Herzegovina said in a new report. 'Lifting the Smog', published on Tuesday. The environmental groups noted that the local authorities are currently planning to add a new 450 MW coal-fired unit to the obsolete local lignite power plant, "which is already a major source of pollution in Tuzla" together with an adjacent open-cast mines and ash disposal site. The new bloc of the power plant "is not designed in line with the latest EU pollution control standards," they added.

"What is needed is a plan how to phase out the Tuzla coal plant with interim measures to reduce coal pollution, but also upgrading the air monitoring network to identify the true magnitude of the health impacts," Vlatka Matkovic Puljic, from HEAL, said in a statement published by BankWatch. "The number of deaths could be reduced if air pollution in Tuzla improved. Strong response to air pollution is urgently needed to protect citizens' health and life," said Maida Mulić director of Public Health Institute Tuzla. Authorities are "directly responsible" for those hundred of deaths "because they are not doing anything to prevent it," Denis Zisko from the Center for Energy and Ecology told ANSA.

"We hope that something would change, not overnight, but if we increase the pressure from the general population to the authorities there are chances that they would eventually start doing their job," Zisko added. The local population is "increasingly aware about the problems that are caused by coal power plants," he addes. The long-term solution is "decarbonization," Zisko concludes, noting that also Bosnia and Herzegovina should "accept the fact that the production of energy by burning fossil fuels is a thing of the past and we have to develop as soon as possible plans for the decarbonization of the energy system and switch to renewables." The report 'Lifting the Smog' states that modelling of health impacts shows that PM2.5 pollution caused 136 premature deaths in adults in Tuzla in 2018, 17% of the total deaths of people over-30. Moreover, PM10 pollution resulted in 1,339 new cases of bronchitis in adults in the Bosnian city last year, the groups said. Preliminary results from a separate UN Environment report recently made public suggested that "air pollution is directly responsible for up to one in five premature deaths in 19 Western Balkan cities," including Tuzla. (ANSA).