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2.2 Material and Method
2.2.1 An Overview of Albania
Albania positioned in Southeast Europe and in the western part of the Balkan
Peninsula. It is bordered with the Adriatic and Ionian seas in the west (Fig. 2.1) and
a land border of only 720  km long. Albania is characterized by a Mediterranean
climate in the west and a Mediterranean-continental climate in the east. The average
annual rainfall is about 1430 mm.
The activities in ex-industrial sites of copper, chromium, iron-nickel and oil
industries have produced several million tons of industrial waste impacting the surrounding environment that had adversely affected the natural resources, followed by
a potential health risk for the people continuously exposed to the polluted areas
(UNDP Albania 2010). The lack of a national network onto air quality monitoring
as well as the data onto morbidity caused by air pollution makes it impossible to
assess the health impact of air pollution in Albania (UNDP Albania 2010).
Fig. 2.1 The map of
Albania and its
geographical position
(Centred at the latitude 41°
00′ north of the equator
and the longitude 20° 00′
east of Greenwich)
2 Spatial Series and Multivariate Analysis in Assessing the Essential (Cu and Zn…