Anyone living or
passing through Athens these days will certainly have noticed another new reality
that has emerged from the crisis. When night falls and temperatures drop, the
smell of smoke wafts through the air, rising from every neighborhood, every
district, every suburb. In fact, the smoke can actually be seen; it hovers over
the city like a hazy gauze enveloping a gaping wound. If you are out and about
at night, the smell seeps into your clothes, your hair, your skin and your
lungs.
The reason for all
this smoke is because most Athenians can no longer afford to buy heating fuel,
which is now taxed at 48%. Fireplaces and wood-burning stoves are being used to
heat hundreds of thousands of apartments across Athens. However, people are not
just burning firewood – they are burning anything they can get their hands on –
old furniture, bits of wood found in the trash and other unsuitable items. The
smog levels have risen dangerously; on Dec 28 the Environment Ministry issued a
press release stating that “extraordinarily high levels of suspended particles”
have been detected by stations which monitor air pollution. The press release
also urges citizens to use proper caution and not burn inappropriate materials –
plastic, painted wood, wood treated with chemicals, etc.
Reports by the
Environment Institute of the Athens Observatory state that the smog is made up
of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other carcinogens. A study by
Aristotle University in Thessaloniki reports that these new high levels of air
pollution pose a threat to public health. Scientists caution that particles
from air pollution “penetrate the lungs and affect blood circulation.”
When the night air
started to get chilly in December, and the faint smell of burning wood could be
detected in the air, at first I unsuspectingly thought it was rather nice –
combined with the Christmas lights strung across the busy square, it sort of
created a cozy holiday feeling. Every winter, when it starts to get cold, you
can detect a very faint smell of burning fireplaces in many neighborhoods so at
first I thought nothing of it. I imagined people were getting into the holiday
spirit; families gathered around the fireplace, decorating their Christmas trees.
But each night the smell got stronger and stronger and one night when I stepped out onto the balcony to get something, I looked up at the curious sight before me: a white foggy mass hung just above the rooftops of all the buildings; my eyes got itchy; when I closed the balcony door, the strong smell of smoke was trapped in my living room. My naïve vision of people hanging their stockings above the chimney with care went up in flames. It dawned on me that people were primarily using fireplaces and/or wood-burning stoves as their main source of heat.
And then suddenly, “it”
was in the news, everyone was talking about “it”…
“Did you see it last night?” – “Athens is covered in it” - “Because of it I can’t put my laundry out to dry, my clothes smell like sooty
smoke” – “We are breathing it in” – “Eventually it will kill us”…
And then suddenly everyone
stopped talking about it and, like
every other new aspect of new Athens, we accepted it as the new normal. Drying
racks are brought indoors, clothes and blankets are no longer aired outside on
balconies; more and more cyclists and motorcyclists can be seen wearing those
little white masks…
And life goes on in
new Athens… each evening smoke signals continue to rise up into the night air but
somehow I get the feeling that no one is receiving the message…
[photo by Yiannis
Larios]
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