2023-09-21 14:00:00
Healthy air is becoming rarer. A survey carried out by The Guardian reveals that “ almost all Europeans breathe very harmful polluted air » (source 1). Only 2% of the population of the Old Continent breathe air that meets the threshold recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), i.e. an annual PM2.5 concentration of 5µg/m3. Despite the efforts made, this limit is far from being respected, and is often even exceeded. “ Almost two thirds (Europeans, editor’s note) live in areas where air quality is more than twice as high as WHO recommendations “, according to The Guardian.
“What we see clearly is that almost everyone in Europe is breathing unhealthy air. It’s regarding a serious public health crisis said Roel Vermeulen, professor of environmental epidemiology at Utrecht University, who led the team of researchers in the warder.
To arrive at this data, satellite images and “measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations” were analyzed by academics from Utrecht University (Netherlands) and the Tropical and Tropical Institute. of Swiss public health as part of an EU-funded project. Their objective was to measure the concentrations of PM2.5, fine particles mainly from heating and road fuel.
Which countries are the most polluted?
If the majority of the continent is affected by this fine particle pollution, researchers have noted significant geographical disparities. Overall, “nearly 30 million Europeans live in areas where concentrations of small particles are at least four times higher than recommendations of the WHO. L’Eastern Europe is significantly worse off than Western Europe, with the exception of Italy, where more than a third of the inhabitants of the Po Valley and surrounding regions in the north of the country breathe air four times higher than the value set by the WHO,” we can read in the survey.
- The UK : “ three-quarters of the population live in areas where exposure is between one and two times the value recommended by the WHO”;
- In Germany : “ three quarters of the population live on more than double the value recommended by the WHO”;
- Half of Spaniards breathe air that is twice as polluted;
- In Serbia, Romania, Albania, Poland, North Macedonia, Slovakia and Hungary: almost all residents breathe air twice as polluted with PM2.5 as recommended by the WHO;
In France, 37% of the population breathes air that contains twice too many fine particles. Do you live in Paris, in the mountains or in another European country and want to have more information on the air you breathe? Discover the interactive map developed by The Guardian on this site.
Only a few areas serve as good studentssuch as Sweden or northern Scotland, where PM2.5 values below WHO standards have been detected.
What are the health consequences?
Air pollution, the new public enemy number 1 of health?
As a reminder, air pollution is responsible for around 400,000 deaths per year in Europe. According to Public Health France, poor air quality causes approximately 40,000 premature deaths per year in France. To these alarming figures we must unfortunately add those of diseases caused by pollutionfrom heart and lung disease to diabetes and mental illness.
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