The Republic of Kosovo is a small country in the Balkans. The capital city of Pristina hosts most of its population and is situated in a mountain basin with poor air exchange, especially during winter. Domestic heating, road transport, industry and coal-fired power plants contribute to high levels of air pollution. We performed a time-series analysis on effects of particulate air pollution (PM2.5) on respiratory health of children and adolescents, using hospital admission and ambulatory visit numbers from the pediatric university clinic. From 2018 until 2020, daily mean concentrations of PM2.5 ranged between 2.41 and 161.03 µg/m³. On average, there were 6.7 ambulatory visits per day with lower numbers on weekends and during the first COVID-19 wave in 2020. An increase in PM2.5 led to an immediate increase in visit numbers that lasted over several days. Averaged over a full week, this amounted to about a 1% increase per 10 µg/m³. There were, on average, 1.7 hospital admissions per day. Two and three days after a rise in air pollution, there was also a rise in admission numbers, followed by a decline during the consecutive days. This might indicate that the wards were overstressed because of high admission numbers and restricted additional admissions.

Introduction:Numerous studies observed health effects of particulate air pollution. Ambient air quality is particularly bad in Pristina. The principal sources of contaminants are sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides NO and NO2 (NOx), ozone (O3), lead (Pb), carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matter (PM or dust).Objective:to investigate effects of concentrations of pollutants in ambient air on hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease in UCCK- Pristina.Methods:Retrospective ecological study. During the three year analytical research predict the potential benefit of decreasing for concentration of PM 2.5, PM 10 were measured in two station in Pristina. The study population consisted of all hospitalization patient in intern clinic for 2010,2011 and 2012 year. Air pollution measurements will be used by KHMI data for the year of 2010, 2011 and 2012 for the municipality ofPristina in the measurements point in:KHMI-MESP which is equipped with automatic analyzer- Air Compact Monitoring System (Version 2.2) recordum MESSTECHNIK GmbH. Statistical data processing will be done with SPSS 17.0 statistical package.Results:Based on the results obtained during the study period concentrated PM are higher level than standards value. The results showed that the number of hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease are positively correlated with concentration pollutants. Results show clear seasonal variation in the effects of PM on hospital admissions in Kosovo. The study period was short but the mean daily admissions for cardiovascular illnesses were quite large.Conclusion:The main source for air pollution was coal-burned power plant and traffic (old vehicles) in Kosovo.

There is increasing scientific evidence of the adverse health effects of indoor exposure to a collective mixture of chemicals in children. People spend 80–90% of their time indoors, breathing air that is often even more polluted than the air outside. This study presents results of school inspection and sampling of selected chemical pollutants—formaldehyde, benzene, and nitrogen dioxide—in classrooms and outdoors in ten schools in Kosovo, conducted by the National Institute of Public Health and the WHO. Nitrogen dioxide and benzene were most affected by outdoor concentrations and were too high in at least one school (NO2: >80 µg/m3, benzene: 1–2 µg/m3). Formaldehyde was significantly higher indoors than outdoors and higher in newer schools than older ones, but overall levels were not alarming (maximum around 20 µg/m3). CO2 levels during class indicated insufficient ventilation. The temperatures were occasionally too high during the cold season. This not only results in unnecessary energy wastage but also too low relative humidity. Improvements in air circulation and temperature control, as well as the identification and elimination of certain sources of pollution would improve the health and learning of school children.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of particulate air pollution (PM2.5) on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in Pristina, Kosovo, in a time-series analysis using daily primary healthcare visits to primary care institutions from 2019 to 2022. For the observation period, 6440 cardiovascular and 15,141 respiratory visits were reported, whereas the daily mean concentrations of PM2.5 ranged between 2.41 and 120.3 µg/m³. Single-lag models indicated a bi-phasic lag structure with increasing effect estimates some days after the air pollution event. In the distributed lag model with seven lags, the effect estimates for the cardiovascular cases indicated the adverse effect of air pollution. The cumulative effect estimate (summed over lag 0 to 6) for an increase of 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5 was a relative risk of 1.010 (95% confidence interval: 1.001–1.019). For respiratory cases, a different lag model (lag 4 through 10) was additionally examined. In this model, significant increases in visits were observed on lags 7 and 8. Overall, no relevant increase in visits occurred during the seven days considered. Visits to general practitioners will often not occur immediately at disease onset because patients will wait, hoping that their health status improves spontaneously. Therefore, we expected some latency in the effects.