A town in Italy has outlawed wood burning pizza stoves over high air pollution levels. Photo: Basheer Tome/Flickr 
 
 The Local · 21 Dec 2015, 16:33 
 
 Published: 21 Dec 2015 16:33 GMT+01:00 
 
 A town in the southern Italian region of Campania has issued an edict that could stop its pizzerias from operating in a bid to put paid to a mysterious smog hanging over the city. 
 
 San Vitaliano, a town of 6,000 inhabitants north of Naples, has one of the highest rates of air pollution in Italy. Last year residents spent a whopping 114 days breathing air that contained levels of polluting particulates above safe levels. 
 
 To put that into perspective, the citizens of Milan, Lombardy's industrial capital, spent 86 days breathing unsafe air. So what's polluting San Vitaliano? A new ordinance from the mayor's office blames its innumerable pizzerias. 
 
 Convinced that the traditional wood-burning pizza stoves are clogging up the lungs of his citizens, Mayor Antonio Falcone has decided to outlaw them as a precautionary measure. 
 
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 “As of today, in spite of several tests carried out by the environment agency, Arpac, we are still unsure of the cause of the pollution,” wrote the mayor. “But the situation has got worse during the winter and we need to take maximum precautions to ensure the problem doesn't deteriorate. 
 
 “Agricultural, artisanal, industrial and commercial producers are hereby forbidden from burning solid biomass such as wood, woodchips, coal and charcoal. The only exceptions are for those which have filter systems in place that will guarantee the elimination of 80 percent of all polluting Pm10 particulates.” 
 
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 The new legislation came into force on December 17th and will apply until June 30th next year. The measures will cease to be active over the summer months but will come into force again in October 2016. 
 
 
 
 The move will cause the town's many pizzerias and artisanal bakeries to change their fuel sources or install costly filters to reduce pollution – a fact which has angered local business owners. 
 
 
 
 Those caught breaking the ban will face fines of between €200 and €1,032. 
 
 “Shocking, it's so ridiculous. They don't want us to make pizza?” Massimilliano Arichello of the locally famous pizzeria Taverna 191 told local paper Il Mattino. 
 
 
 
 “We make about 34 pizzas a day, how do they think we are responsible for the pollution problems around here?” ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Pizza-making is one of the factors that have made St Vitaliano one of the worst-polluted towns in Italy 
 
 A town in Italy has imposed a temporary ban on the traditional way of pizza-making as a measure to curb soaring pollution. 
 
 An edict issued by the mayor of San Vitaliano, just outside of Naples, bans the use of wood-fired stoves in bakeries and eateries including pizzerias unless their owners install special filters to reduce air pollution. 
 
 The measure has been prompted by "utmost concern" over worsening air quality, and will stay in place until 31 March. It can be reintroduced later if the new filtering systems prove ineffective. 
 
 The ban will be enforced by police checks, and those found in breach of the mayor's order will face fines of up to 1,032 euros (£760, $1,130). 
 
 Bad air quality is a longstanding problem for San Vitaliano. According to Il Mattino newspaper, it is more polluted than Beijing, while nearby Naples - usually seen as one of Italy's worst offenders in terms of air quality - seems like "a perfumed garden" in comparison. In 2015, San Vitaliano exceeded the threshold for emissions 114 times, compared to 86 times in Milan, another badly polluted Italian city, the paper says. 
 
 But not everyone is convinced that pizza-making is the true culprit. Local residents and pizza makers held a protest on Sunday in front of the town hall against the mayor's order. "We can't be the cause of the smog," said one, according a report in Corriere della Sera. "Naples has many more pizzerias than San Vitaliano but doesn't have the same pollution levels. It's clear that they don't want to pinpoint the real cause. This order is a very costly mistake for us." 
 
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– Few things are more Italian than baking pizza in a perfectly smoldering wood-fired stove, so San Vitaliano's move to ban the beloved practice comes as a surprise. The town of 6,000 north of Naples has some of the worst air pollution in Italy—Il Mattino says its air quality is worse than Beijing's, while Naples is "a perfumed garden" in comparison—but environmental tests have failed to identify the source. In an effort to "take maximum precautions to ensure the problem doesn't deteriorate," Mayor Antonio Falcone has banned "agricultural, artisanal, industrial, and commercial producers … from burning solid biomass such as wood, woodchips, coal, and charcoal," unless filter systems are in place to eliminate 80% of pollutants, reports the Local. The rule will be in place until at least the end of March, reports the BBC. The Local reports the plan is to relieve the rule in July, August, and September—the situation is poorest in winter, Falcone says—but most pizzerias and bakeries will be forced to change their fuel sources, buy expensive filters, or face fines up to $1,100. "Shocking, it's so ridiculous," a rep from a local pizzeria tells Il Mattino. "We make about 34 pizzas a day, how do they think we are responsible for the pollution problems around here?" "We can't be the cause of the smog," a local who protested outside San Vitaliano's town hall on Sunday adds, per Corriere della Sera. "Naples has many more pizzerias than San Vitaliano but doesn't have the same pollution levels. It's clear that they don't want to pinpoint the real cause. This order is a very costly mistake for us." The BBC reports San Vitaliano residents saw 114 days of unsafe air levels in 2015, compared to Naples' 86.