The air pollution in Prague is so bad that visiting the city for a long weekend means you have as good as smoked four cigarettes and those living in the city smoke the equivalent of 365 a year, a new study reveals.
According to the environmental group Transport & Environment, breathing the air on a four-day visit to Prague is equivalent to inhaling the smoke of four cigarettes. That works out to people living in the city smoking the equivalent of 365 cigarettes a year.
After crunching the numbers, researchers drew parallels between air pollution and smoking cigarettes – based on the level of fine particulates – and found that enjoying a few days in Prague or Istanbul was the equivalent of smoking four cigarettes.
Long weekends spent in Barcelona and Dublin, meanwhile, were the equivalent of smoking one cigarette.
Even small amounts of air pollution can damage our hearts, yet pollution may be much worse than officially recognized, the association said in a press release.
Having several days in Milan would have the same effect on visitors’ health as puffing on three cigarettes, compared to 2.75 in London, and two cigarettes in Vienna and Rome.
And in the space of one year in London, if a long weekend is counted as four days, visitors would have taken in harmful particulates which are the equivalent of smoking 251 cigarettes, under these figures.
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