FOR several days this summer, the Albanian city of Elbasan choked in a dense cloud of stinging smoke coming from the direction of its notorious steelworks.
Environmental inspectors who rushed to two fires discovered 318 tonnes of toxic industrial dust that had been stored for months in a chrome factory, AlbChrome, with no contracts for its safe disposal.
The site, owned by the Turkish group Yildirim, was temporarily shut.
It is the latest in a litany of disasters to befall one of the most benighted industrial cities in Europe, repeatedly blanketed in lethal smoke from similar blazes.
The country’s third largest city has also become a symbol of the corruption that has dogged Albania’s painful transition to capitalism, with Albanians paying with their health for recurring scandals.
An incinerator scheme to clean up the ecological catastrophe turned out to be a multi-million-dollar scam that included a “ghost” incinerator for the capital Tirana that was never built.
Its tentacles reached into the government, with top officials including an environment minister jailed for graft.
The Elbasan incinerator operated for only a few months, with waste piling up without being treated.
A days-long fire in July 2025 at a waste dump next to homes outside Elbasan led to concentrations of toxic furans, dioxins, methane and volatile organic compounds “more than seven times” above safety limits, said Professor Besnik Baraj of Albania’s Academy of Sciences.
“I almost died from a severe (asthma) attack,” said local Fatmira Serjani, recalling the “terrible nights and crushing mornings”, her voice breaking between gasps of her inhaler.
The repeated frauds and environmental failures may also slow Albania’s hopes of joining the European Union in 2030, analysts warn, with neighbouring Montenegro seen to be pulling ahead.
In the first Albanian case of its kind, asthma-sufferer Serjani is taking the city of Elbasan and the manager of the Eco-Elb landfill site to court for the air pollution it caused.
Her lawyer Gentian Serjani said the fire was “probably deliberate” – a frequent accusation about blazes in and around the old steelworks complex.
Environmental engineer and former Elbasan councillor Ahmet Mehmeti said some factories on the site turn off filters on their chimneys to save money, adding new layers of toxic dust to the two million tonnes of hazardous material inherited from the communist era.
“Discharges seep into the water, flow into the nearby river that irrigates farmland and end up in the fruit and vegetables on our plates.”
“The situation is serious in villages near factories that emit large quantities of harmful gases into the air,” said Anila Jance, a biochemistry professor at the University of Medical Sciences in Tirana.
“Air quality indicators show high concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5). Chronic exposure to PM2.5 is closely linked to a higher incidence of chronic respiratory diseases,” she added.
In the village of Bradashesh, retired teacher Lirie Curri, 61, showed X-rays of her damaged lungs.
“Even the sun here is black like my lungs,” she said.
“It’s unbearable. We can’t open the windows. Even the oranges in the garden and the laundry hanging out to dry are covered in black dust.”
Curri’s eight-year-old niece Ermi said “all the children cough” in her class at school. And when they catch a cold and blow their nose in a tissue, it “is black”, added her mother, Mirela Kabashi, a police officer in Elbasan.
Genetic diseases and cancers have been rising in the region for years, said environmental experts.
Albanian authorities did not respond to questions on how the pollution has impacted people’s health in Elbasan.
However, the US-based Health Effects Institute estimated in a 2023 report that the mortality rate from air pollution in Albania is three times the European average.
There are no official statistics because the country has long not had a single working air monitoring station, despite the EU paying €400,000 to equip four in 2011.
The equipment delivered to the National Environment Agency in 2013 has been idle for 12 years due to a lack of maintenance and money to run them, according to the EU delegation in Tirana.
Nearly €150mil in public funds were spent on a waste management project involving incinerators in Elbasan, Tirana and Fier.
The Elbasan incinerator, which cost €26mil, is now a rusting hulk after barely operating while the Fier facility (€23mil) never functioned.
The €100mil Tirana incinerator was never built.
Documents were signed but the money went up in smoke in corruption, embezzlement and money laundering.
Former environment minister Lefter Koka was jailed for receiving €3.7mil in kickbacks.
Other high-ranking officials have been implicated, with former deputy prime minister Arben Ahmetaj fleeing to Switzerland while denying any wrongdoing.
A second major scandal erupted in 2024 when Thai authorities turned back a cargo of toxic waste from Elbasan which had been labelled as legal iron oxide.
The shipment of more than 100 containers holding 2,100 tonnes of toxic waste was sent back to Albania. The containers are now stacked close to homes in the southwestern town of Vrine.
Prosecutors have issued 33 arrest warrants against customs officers and employees of the National Environment Agency over their alleged involvement in the scheme.
Analysis of samples by an Italian laboratory revealed “dangerous and toxic” dust from the electric arc furnace of a steel plant in Elbasan operated by Turkish company Kurum International and two Albanian firms, investigators said.
Prosecutors insist that “this is not an isolated crime but a series of illegal acts with serious consequences for the environment, health and customs” regulations, involving trafficking prohibited goods, abuse of power and money laundering.
The European Commission said “the fight against corruption is a key element for a country to be able to join the EU” and that Albanian legislation will have to be aligned with the EU before environmental elements of the accession talks, relating to waste management, water and air quality, can be closed.
In September, Prime Minister Edi Rama said a national waste treatment operator was being created to meet European standards.
But analyst Tefta Kelmendi, of the Jacques Delors Institute think tank, said recent high-profile cases represent a “big test” for Albania’s accession prospects.
“A lot will depend on how much SPAK will manage to remain independent,” she said, adding the anti-graft agency is becoming increasingly under pressure. — AFP
