Cancer haunts residents of Kosovo’s coal-mining town of Obilic

In Obilic, black soot can cover clothes hung outside within minutes. Residents say that is all the evidence they need to know the air around Kosovo’s biggest coal-fired power plants is dangerous.

Jovan Zivic, who runs a café on the road to one of the plants, lost his teenage son to cancer in 2010. Fourteen years later, his wife died of the same disease. Many of his customers, he told AFP, carry similar stories.

“Every family has been affected. Plemetina has about 200 homes. Now one in every three houses is empty. People leave to look for a better life,” Zivic said as smoke rose from a nearby plant.

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Every family has been affected. Plemetina has about 200 homes. Now one in every three houses is empty. People leave to look for a better life.

Obilic lies between two power stations near Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The town produces almost all of Kosovo’s electricity by burning lignite, the lowest-quality and most polluting form of coal, mined nearby. Kosovo’s parliament has officially declared Obilic an environmentally endangered zone because of continuing pollution.

Residents report a range of health problems, and the dangers of air pollution in the area have been well documented. But incomplete cancer data makes it difficult to determine whether the disease affects people there at a higher rate than elsewhere in Kosovo. Brahim Gashi, a former mechanic whose brother died of throat cancer, said residents do not need statistics to understand what they breathe each day.

“Just watch women hanging laundry in their yards. The clothes become covered in black soot within minutes,” Gashi said.

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Just watch women hanging laundry in their yards. The clothes become covered in black soot within minutes.