We Only Want to Breathe

How many people have to die for the Croatian government to realise the alarming situation? We don’t ask for much.. We just want to breathe..

Ankica was buried at the Sisak cemetery yesterday. She died of pancreatic cancer. A day before she died I met Tomo’s mother who said she was not feeling well and was diagnosed with breast cancer because of which she had to receive chemotherapy. She lives in Sisak too. I dod not tell her I had spoken to Mirjana who has lung cancer and meets three new cancer patients from Sisak in a Zagreb hospital each month.  

The smell of rotten eggs

I remember that one of my first duties as deputy Sisak-Moslavica county prefect was to expand the local air quality monitoring network.

We could not read into the air quality data we had, although we smelt the smell of rotten eggs that has been the signature of Sisak for years. We protested because the problem of air quality in Sisak, it seems to me, has existed forever, but the authorities did not care.

Mostly malignant illnesses 

Additional measurements which we as a county paid over a million kuna for in 2005 and 2006, indicated that the concentration of sulphur-dioxide had exceeded its mean daily values 51 times and sulphur-hydrogen 63 times, while the excessive values for 2006 were significantly higher, so sulphur-hydrogen exceeded the round 100.

I wish to add that the excess in value of sulphur-dioxide should not be more than three times in a year and sulphur-hydrogen more than seven times. When we add to this the excess values of benzene, it is not strange that the death rate of patients with malignant illnesses was the highest in Sisak – Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic lymphatic leukaemia and multiple mieloma.

We informed the Environment Protection Ministry, the relevant inspection and Croatian government about the results of the gauging and requested urgent action. The oil company Ina’s management board and the government were asked several times to invest the necessary resources into the modernisation of the oil refinery in Sisak with the aim of improving the quality of air.

They did not want to hear us 

We were convinced that now, when we have exact data, there would be a breakthrough. They all turned a deaf ear. They are paid to react, but they did not want to hear us. Now they are reprimanding us for organising ourselves.

On the one hand, carcinoma patients are forming their own association with the help of the Croatian Peasants’ Party (HSS), collecting signatures for a petition “I am a Witness Too” and are requesting damages for being poisoned for years. On the other hand, reporters are establishing an association for the protection of the environment because the most polluted town in the country does not have its “green” association.

I have personally taken part in the research conducted in 21 EU countries whose goal was to establish the level of mercury in the organism. I provided a lock of hair that was analysed in an international laboratory. It was established that one gram of my hair contained 3.4 micrograms of mercury, which is within the permissible margins, but is still three times more than the amount of mercury found in the specimens of women from other parts of Croatia. Since I only eat Adriatic fish that does not contain mercury, the only cause could be air pollution.

By burning fossil fuels used by the Sisak refinery, mercury evaporates and is deposited in the human organisam. I wonder where the end of this is. Until when will the citizens of Sisak be third-class citizens? How many other people have to die in order for the Croatian government to realise the alarming situation? And wse are not asking for much… We just want to breathe…