Estimate: Air pollution causes 800,000 premature deaths each year in Europe
Environment.Madrid deactivates its protocol due to high pollution as of Wednesday
Heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary emphysema, cognitive problems ... Many times it goes unnoticed, but pollution has a direct impact on health.
The air we breathe, especially in big cities, contains substances that can make us sick.
And that also translates into a higher risk of death.
A study has just estimated, city by city, the mortality associated with pollution in 858 European cities and metropolitan areas and the number of annual deaths that could be avoided if exposure to certain pollutants were reduced.
In addition, the work has developed two rankings of mortality burden associated with two of the main air pollutants:
fine particulate
matter (PM2.5) and
nitrogen dioxide
(NO2).
The results obtained invite reflection.
According to the estimates of the study, carried out by researchers from ISGlobal de Barcelona, a center promoted by La Caixa, in collaboration with scientists from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Switzerland) and the University of Utrecht, if all the cities analyzed were able to comply With the levels recommended by the World Health Organization (10 µg / m³ for PM2.5 and 40 µg / m³ for NO2),
51,000 and 900 premature deaths
could be prevented
each year, respectively
.
But if, in addition, all cities were able to equal the lowest exposure recorded in Europe (3.7 µg / m3 for PM2.5 and 3.5 µg / m3 for NO2), avoidable mortality would be significantly higher and premature deaths preventable by year would amount, respectively, to 125,000 and 79,000.
84% of the European population studied is exposed to levels higher than those recommended by the WHO of PM2.5 and 9% did so at the recommended NO2 levels, the document points out.
One of the rankings prepared, the one that refers to mortality associated with NO2, a toxic gas mainly associated with road traffic, does not leave Spain in a good place.
The
Madrid metropolitan area
leads the classification, with an annual average of 39.2 µg / m3 of NO2 and 206 preventable deaths if the maximum levels recommended by the WHO were always met (these preventable deaths would rise to 2,380 annually if the levels were equalized lowest levels of pollution recorded in Europe).
Madrid has precisely activated the action protocol for episodes of high nitrogen dioxide pollution these days, although it is planned that these measures will be withdrawn today since ventilation conditions are expected to improve in the coming days.
In this same ranking,
Barcelona
occupies the sixth position, with an average annual average of 38.9 µg / m3 of NO2 and 82 preventable deaths if the WHO recommendations were consistently met (1,883 equaling contamination levels).
If only the WHO recommendation parameter is taken into account, Barcelona would occupy fourth place on the list, but the researchers used an algorithm to develop the ranking that assesses mortality rates, the percentage of avoidable mortality and the years of life lost by every air pollutant.
Cities such as Paris, Milan or Antwerp accompany Spanish cities to the top of this list, which also includes Mollet del Vallés.
However, the ranking elaborated on the mortality associated with the other pollutant studied, PM2.5, is quite different.
In this case it is the cities of Brescia (Italy), Bergamo (Italy), Karviná (Czech Republic), Vicenza (Italy) and the Metropolitan Union of Upper Silesia (Poland) that lead the ranking.
Madrid is in position 551 on this list, while Barcelona occupies position 157, according to the work data.
"We have observed a
great variability of results
between the different cities analyzed," Sasha Khomenko, a researcher at ISGlobal and main signatory of the study, points out to EL MUNDO, who underlines that one of the objectives of the work was to analyze the independent impact that different pollutants may have .
According to their data, the cities with the highest mortality burden associated with PM2.5 are located in the Italian region of the Padana Plain, eastern Czech Republic and southern Poland, where there is greater exposure to fine particles produced by combustion from vehicle engines and also from other sources such as industry, heating or coal burning, he explains.
On the other hand, in the cities of the South and the West of Europe that lead the classification of mortality associated with NO2, it is the exposure to pollution derived from traffic the main source of pollution, says Khomenko.
"It is essential to take these
local differences
into account in order
to carry out policies that, consequently, can be directed at reducing the main pollutants," emphasizes the researcher, who hopes that the work data will contribute to expanding measures against pollution and its effects. .
"There is no safe threshold. Even at levels below the recommendations there is, as we are seeing, an impact on health," adds the scientist.
"There is a lot of room for improvement to promote healthier cities," he recalls.
In the rankings produced by the research, northern European cities such as Reykjavik (Iceland), Tromso (Norway), Umea (Sweden) are among the cities with the lowest burden of mortality attributable to pollution.
"There are many factors that explain this," says Khomenko.
On the one hand, its population density and its geographical location contribute to the fact that the concentration of pollutants is not very high, he clarifies.
But many of its policies, such as the promotion of public transport or the use of bicycles, also contribute to generating cleaner air, he points out.
"In each city, a study must be made of which are the main sources of pollution and act accordingly", claims the researcher.
To carry out the study, the team compared the available levels of air pollution in cities with two theoretical improvement scenarios, calculating the impact that both pollution reduction scenarios would have on the mortality burden.
To establish the average levels of each pollutant in each of the cities, three different mathematical models were combined, taking 2015 as a reference and comparing it with 2018.
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