2023-05-30 16:52:00
Eight out of ten Italians breathe “unhealthy” air. The experts of Sima – the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine – have sounded the alarm on the increase in mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The data were illustrated today at the ‘Free to Breathe’ event organized by Consulcesi Group in view of World Environment Day on 5 June.
What kind of air do Italians and more generally the inhabitants of Europe breathe? Sima herself took a picture of the situation and proposed possible solutions during the meeting which saw the participation of numerous institutional and scientific representatives, including Fabio Massimo Castaldo, vice president of the European Parliament; Roberto Monaco, general secretary of Fnomceo; Veronica Manfredi, director of the Zero Pollution Strategy of the European Commission; Pier Mannuccio Mannucci, professor emeritus of Internal Medicine at the University of Milan, and David Korn, medical director of the Pediatric Emergency Department and head of Digital Health projects at the Gemelli Irccs Polyclinic. During the day, Consulcesi also launched the first class action lawsuit on ‘Clean Air’.
According to Sima experts, around 81% of the EU population breathes air with a concentration of fine particles higher than the health safety thresholds set by the WHO as far back as 2005. Applying the current legal limits instead, only 21% of Europeans are in a health risk situation linked to Pm10 and Pm2.5 exceedances, but the same is also true for nitrogen oxides. “The issue is even more worrying because the WHO health safety thresholds were more than halved in 2021 – comments Prisco Piscitelli, epidemiologist and vice president of Sima – The air quality monitoring network, widely distributed in all our regions, is calibrated on legal limits, set by the current European Directive on air quality under review, which today are therefore three times higher than the protective thresholds for our health, thus making it necessary to pay greater attention to the health reading of environmental data” .
Sima also warns the population about the health risks associated with pollution: “The impact is direct and is now well quantifiable: for each increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of the average annual concentrations of fine particles, we observe an increase in general mortality for all causes equal to 7%”. Specifically, continues Piscitelli, “mortality from cardiovascular diseases or respiratory causes increases by 10%, while the incidence of heart attacks rises by 26%. But an association with the increase in fine particles is also demonstrated for the risk of dementia and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.The problem is all the more serious since we cannot defend ourselves from the air we breathe and it is possible to record increases even higher than 10 micrograms per cubic meter in some areas of Europe such as the Po Valley”.
“A major action plan is needed for the mitigation of air pollution – says Alessandro Miani, president of Sima – starting from the Po Valley, which presents strong criticalities, expressly highlighted by the latest report on air quality by the European Agency for the environment: immediately start interventions based on the use of transparent ethanol-based titanium dioxide photocatalytic coatings, which have scientifically demonstrated the ability to reduce air pollutants into by-products harmless to human health, applying them on the wall and glass surfaces of the public and private buildings.And again: implementing urban and peri-urban greenery with species with a low water footprint and high filtration and absorption capacity would also be useful for mitigating the health effects of urban heat islands in cities”.
“A further possible operational path – he continues – is that of remodulating the interventions of the Pnrr by stopping the funding pouring into a multiplicity of micro-projects to focus decisively on structural interventions for the mitigation of air pollution and climate change, concentrating every resource on large public investments for renewable energies and the replacement of domestic heating systems, which are mainly responsible for the emissions of fine particles into the atmosphere, in order to have lasting and positive effects on our health”.
Data in hand, Eduardo Missoni, professor of Global Health Sda-Bocconi, launches an appeal precisely on the final day of the annual WHO general assembly in Geneva: “It is an absolute priority that WHO devotes more resources to the fight against pollution atmospheric in particular, strengthening the great efforts made so far by its Environment and Health Department, directed by Dr. Maria Neira.We are facing an emergency with an enormous short and long-term impact: this requires the maximum possible commitment, putting human and financial resources comparable to those used during the pandemic, to control the social and economic determinants of pollution, progressively aiming for a real paradigm shift with respect to the current model of socio-economic development”.
A few days from the European Green Week to be held in Brussels next week, the appeal to Europe and the Member States is to “transpose the WHO 2021 Guidelines into the new directive on air quality to protect public health. Reducing air pollution requires immediate action,” Missoni said.
#Sima #experts #Italians #breathe #unhealthy #air