Summary
10 October 2011
Italy's business capital, Milan, banned all traffic from its streets for 10 hours on Sunday in an attempt to reduce pollution. The city is particularly vulnerable to pollution.
Reporter:
Mark Duff
Milan is one of Europe's most polluted cities
Listen
Click to hear the report:
Report
Viewed from the roof of Milan's cathedral, the Duomo, the Alps appear through a brown, murky haze of pollution. Satellite images regularly show the city to be one of the world's pollution hotspots.
The problem has been made more acute now by the weather. For most of the past month, Milaneses have been basking in glorious sunshine and temperatures well above the seasonal average.
That means pollution levels have reached a level not normally seen before the cold, still days of January.
The unseasonable weather has exacerbated the two principal causes of Milan's perennial smog crisis: Italians' love affair with the car and a trick of nature. Milan lies in a shallow bowl, which traps the fumes from cars, and inefficient old household boilers.
Sunday's ban was triggered when the measure of pollution exceeded a statutory ceiling for more than twelve days.
Mark Duff, 大象传媒 News, Milan
Listen
Click to hear the vocabulary:
Vocabulary
- murky haze
air difficult to see through due to smoke
- pollution hotspots
areas where the air has its highest concentration of harmful substances
- acute
severe, serious
- seasonal average
usual temperatures for that time of the year
- exacerbated
worsened
- perennial
continuous
- smog
heavily polluted air that contains a mixture of smoke, gases and chemicals
- a trick of nature
an event that has not being prompted by man, it happens naturally
- a shallow bowl
a depressed landscape with surroundings slightly higher than the centre
- triggered
brought about
