No abstract

Serbia, as a developing country and EU accession country, faces many challenges. One of the key areas identified as the most complicated problem in the negotiation process is the issues of environmental protection and improvement, including the energy sector. Since population in Serbia is concerned because of poor living standards, high unemployment rate, and other social issues it could be questioned what is their concern and awareness about climate change since it is a realistic and visible phenomenon that is hard for someone to ignore and neglect. This paper presents some of the results of a survey conducted among adults in rural and urban parts of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina on their perception, awareness, and knowledge about climate change issues. The research/survey also examined the specific actions that respondents would take as a personal contribution to mitigating the effects of climate problems. The results indicate that respondents have a high awareness of climate change, but the knowledge on climate change is relatively low even though the respondents graduated from faculty (about 52%).

As atmospheric pollution continue to be a significant issue on global level, but with a particular importance at European Union level, the air pollution reduction policies will continue to be enforced in the next decades. At EU level, especially on most developed countries, NO2 and Particulate Matter (fine and coarse fractions) remain an acute problem. To help decision factors to have a better view on entire EU region the SHERPA (Screening for High Emission Reduction Potentials on Air quality) was developed, a tool that was proven helpful in addressing source allocation, governance and the assessment of scenario impacts.

Four monitoring campaigns of sedimentable dust were provided from two large non-sanitary landfills (Zrenjanin and Novi Sad) in Serbia during 2021. Particle size analysis by laser diffraction and inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) were carried out in order to obtain particle size distribution (PSD) and toxic elements (TEs) concentrations. The health risk assessment of the landfill employees was performed according to United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) methods based on TEs concentrations. The particle size distribution results demonstrated that the majority of sedimentable dust samples mass were not concentrated neither within PM2.5 neither within PM10 fraction. Analysis revealed high concentration of TEs at both landfills: an extremely high concentration of Cr and Zn in samples from Zrenjanin landfill was detected. Health risk potential of elements was as follows for both landfills: Cr > Co > Pb > Ni > Zn > Cu. According to the results, maximal hazard index (HI) for landfill employees in Zrenjanin (1.97*10-1) and Novi Sad (1.13*10-1) showed that non-cancer risk was very low. For both landfill sites, cancer risk (CR) was highest for Cr (2.75*10-5 for Zrenjanin and 2.02*10-7 for Novi Sad), though still within the defined threshold for tolerable cancer risk.