The Town of Most - Article Gap Fill

The moment you arrive in Most you're hit by smog. You can feel it in back of your throat and taste sulphur in the air.

On the edge of town lies huge industrial complex, vast mill of smokestacks and cooling towers, it's one of sources of the smog. Most itself hasn't changed much since the end of Communism. There are few more shops with few more goods for sale. But there's still bleak, lifeless feel to the place. industrial workers are housed in rows of identical apartment blocks and do their shopping in colourless, concrete town centre.

The surrounding countryside has, over years, been transformed into scarred landscape of huge open-cast mines. From them comes lignite, the brown coal which is main source of cheap fuel here, as well as the cause of much of the pollution. When burnt it gives off thick sulphur fumes.

price of industrial growth here has been great...and the people of Most are still living with its consequences. In the children's ward of the local hospital, Dr. Jiri Biolek, deals with the effects of the pollution on city's young. Sitting in his spartan office, he remembers the day back in the autumn of 1981 when the pollution was so bad that all leaves fell off the trees overnight. few days later there was an outbreak of pneumonia in the town. The "authorities of the time", as Dr. Biolek calls them, told hospital to say the illnesses had been caused by virus.