Contamination and multiple consequences. In an unprecedented study published on Wednesday, January 29, called “asthma, stroke, diabetes … What impacts on ambient air pollution? And what economic impact?”, Public health France (SPF) analyzed the various impacts of fine particle contamination France, which annually 40,000 dead.
One of the main lessons of this work in association with the Aix -Marseille School of Economics, which refers to the 2016-2019 period, therefore, before the Covid Pandemia, it remains the “important economic weight” of pollution of the air.
This is equivalent to “12.9 billion euros in relation to PM2.5, or around 200 euros per year and per capita, and 3.8 billion euros for NO2, or 59 euros per year and by inhabited.”
These figures include the consumption of medical resources (consultations, drugs, hospitalizations, transport …), resources lost by the company (salaries, less access to the labor market, early retirement) and the loss of well -being for patients, detailed to the Economist Olivier Chanel A AFP.
Eight diseases
Public Health also alerts the aspect of the health of such pollution and indicates tens of thousands of new cases of diseases each year.
For this, the work has been interested in the development of eight diseases in the tested link with exposure to fine particles and nitrogen dioxide, including lung cancer, COPD, asthma, pneumonia and other acute infections. , infarction, hypertension and type 2 diabetes.
From a disease and one pollutant to the other, “between 12 and 20% of the new cases of respiratory diseases are identified in children (that is, from 7,000 to 40,000 cases). In adults, it is between 7 and 13% of the new cases of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular or metabolic (4,000 to 78,000 cases) “which are attributable every year to air pollution.
“Some populations are more vulnerable”: children, more exposed to subsequent diseases due to the imperative respiratory capacity, older women, pregnant women, workers or outdoor athletes, smokers, said Sylvia Medina, coordinator of the air program and public health France, during a press conference.
“Reduce fine particles and nitrogen dioxide in ambient air” would avoid “several tens of thousands of diseases” underlines the study conducted with several associated organizations.
European Directive in 2030
The reduction of concentrations to the levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) would avoid three quarters of the cases of diseases related to exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) and would be divided by two related to dioxide Nitrogen nitrogen (NO2). Therefore, 30,000 new cases of asthma would be saved in children from 0 to 17 years.
A new European air quality directive will harden in 2030 the thresholds of particle nitrogen dioxides.
“This is a first step, which would eliminate 15% of the total disease load taken into account in our study,” Guillaume Boulanger told AFP. The French objective remains, however, point to the most ambitious values of WHO.
Public policies, at the risk of being unpopular, must continue their efforts throughout the territory and in all sources of air pollutants, in particular road traffic but also wood heating, industry, emissions in the agricultural sector, declared To experts. In recent years, justice has also prolonged.
In June 2023, the State was first sentenced to compensate for the victims of air pollution by a court, who judged that two children with bronchiolitis and repeated infections of the ears had become ill, among other things , overcoming the thresholds of pollution in the Paris region.
Source: BFM TV
