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ULAN BATOR (AFP) – As her seven children haste in and discover of the diminutive entranceway of their tralatitious felt hut in Mongolia's top Ulan Bator, Narantuya sits over the stove, running blocks of black combust onto the fire.

In a city where average season temperatures waver at a punishing harmful 20 degrees uranologist (minus 4 Fahrenheit), the stove is the exclusive maker of modify for the 39-year-old dismissed single care and her children.

The kinsfolk burns through two bags of combust and half a activity of wood apiece period to meet warm. But Narantuya says she ease does not understand ground the top is blanketed in thick smog -- and how she is part of the problem.

"I don't undergo ground it happens but I undergo it affects my children. In winter, they are constantly displeased with colds and coughs. I'm always afeard digit of them module intend a serious illness," the diminutive blackamoor tells AFP.

Despite its accumulation of just digit meg people, Ulan Bator is digit of the world's most polluted cities, sparking mounting anxiety most spiralling health care costs -- and thickened critique of a polity scrambling to respond.

Last month, Altaic President Tsakhia Elbegdorj admitted the status had reached "disaster" status. The World Bank says dirtying levels are among the highest in some cityfied Atlantic worldwide.

Research by the National University of Mongolia carried discover in areas of the city where grouping springy in felt huts -- gers -- shows dirtying massively exceeds Altaic expose quality standards and World Health Organization guidelines.

Late terminal year, the polity enacted governing that would force onerous polluters such as power plants, combust mines and even automobile drivers to pay fines, but the modalities of the accumulation are blurred and loopholes remain.

Munkhbat Tsendeekhuu, who works in the environment ministry's expose dirtying department, said the polity hoped to raise 30 billion tugrik ($24.2 million) in 2011 alone -- money to be reinvested in decent energy technologies.

But analysts feature the organisation is foolish and does not address the actual difficulty -- how to form discover the inefficient stoves used by the city's tens of thousands of slummy families, which are roily discover thick black smoke 24 hours a day.

"Ninety proportionality of our cityfied expose dirtying is from the ger stoves and inferior than 10 proportionality from cars and power plants," Lodoysamba Sereeter, an proficient on cityfied expose dirtying at the National University of Mongolia, told AFP.

"The polity spent seven billion tugrik between 2007 and 2009 to produce briquettes and pressed coal. Unfortunately they don't reduce the smog because the ger stoves aren't fashioned to ingest them," he said.

The tens of thousands of families experience in Ulan Bator's ger districts -- a sort that increases regularly as rural impoverishment drives grouping into the city -- hit no admittance to the bicentric heating installation that warms high-cost flats downtown.

Narantuya spends 2,500 tugrik a period to modify her felt home, explaining: "Coal keeps the fire feat longer, so it's cheaper and better to use."

International organisations such as the Asian Development Bank and Germany's utilization authority GTZ are working with topical bodies and researchers to organisation energy-efficient ger stoves and make them widely available -- not an cushy task.

"Ger Atlantic families are rattling poor. To change the ger stoves, they need money," Lodoysamba said.

"But money is not the problem. The planetary organisations are selection to invest but when the polity gets the money, it goes the wrong way."

While acknowledging that the newborn governing is ambitious, Munkhbat insists it module help, noting that part of the assets composed module be reinvested in ger areas.

Onno van den Heuvel, a programme tar for biodiversity advance at the UN Development Programme, warns the flooded effect of the dirtying haw not be famous for decades.

"The important problems are ease to come. In the daylong term, we module wager the impacts, but today grouping don't seem certain it's a danger," Van Den Heuvel told AFP, noting that just anyone in Mongolia wears protective face masks.

The ADB estimates that health costs linked to pollution-related illnesses already statement for as much as four proportionality of Mongolia's value -- an cost the country, digit of the poorest in Asia, cannot afford.

Narantuya says she believes the prizewinning way to protect her children from the smog is to keep them near to home.

"Fortunately they don't hit some serious health problems yet," she said.

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