Chapter 1
Air Quality in Europe: Today
and Tomorrow
G. Guariso and M. Volta
The last “Air quality in Europe” report by the European Environmental Agency
(EEA 2015) foresees almost five millions of years of life lost (YOLL) in the 28 EU
Member States due to the high concentrations of PM2.5. YOLLs are an estimate of
the average years that a person would have lived if he or she had not died prematurely, giving greater weight to deaths at a younger age and lower weight to
deaths at an older age. For the 507.4 million inhabitants of EU, this means an
average loss of more than 3 days each year.
Furthermore, speaking about the average conditions, for air quality has a limited
meaning. The situation is normally worse in highly populated areas where most
population lives and, for the same reason, emission of pollutant are higher.
Indeed, the same report, referring to 990 urban monitoring stations in 736
European cities, shows that 202 of them (27.4 %) have exceeded the limit of
35 days above 50 lg/m
3 for PM10 average daily concentrations.
The situation is quite different in different EU Member States (MS) and within
each MS. Figure 1.1 shows for instance the 36-th highest daily mean and the 25 and
75 % percentiles (box limits) in each MS compared to the European limit of
50 lg/m
3 . As we will see in the following chapters, exact links between pollutant
concentrations and health impacts are not completely known and thus the limits
proposed by the World Health Organization are even stricter than those adopted by
EU regulations.
Figure 1.2 expresses this situation in geographical terms, showing where the
exceedance of the EU limit for PM10 is reported.
The situation is quite similar for other traditional pollutant such as NOx and only
slightly more complex for Ozone, as shown in Fig. 1.3.
G. Guariso
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
M. Volta (&)
Università degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy
e-mail: marialuisa.volta@unibs.it
© The Author(s) 2017
G. Guariso and M. Volta (eds.), Air Quality Integrated Assessment,
PoliMI SpringerBriefs, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33349-6_1
1
Air Quality in Europe: Today
and Tomorrow
G. Guariso and M. Volta
The last “Air quality in Europe” report by the European Environmental Agency
(EEA 2015) foresees almost five millions of years of life lost (YOLL) in the 28 EU
Member States due to the high concentrations of PM2.5. YOLLs are an estimate of
the average years that a person would have lived if he or she had not died prematurely, giving greater weight to deaths at a younger age and lower weight to
deaths at an older age. For the 507.4 million inhabitants of EU, this means an
average loss of more than 3 days each year.
Furthermore, speaking about the average conditions, for air quality has a limited
meaning. The situation is normally worse in highly populated areas where most
population lives and, for the same reason, emission of pollutant are higher.
Indeed, the same report, referring to 990 urban monitoring stations in 736
European cities, shows that 202 of them (27.4 %) have exceeded the limit of
35 days above 50 lg/m
3 for PM10 average daily concentrations.
The situation is quite different in different EU Member States (MS) and within
each MS. Figure 1.1 shows for instance the 36-th highest daily mean and the 25 and
75 % percentiles (box limits) in each MS compared to the European limit of
50 lg/m
3 . As we will see in the following chapters, exact links between pollutant
concentrations and health impacts are not completely known and thus the limits
proposed by the World Health Organization are even stricter than those adopted by
EU regulations.
Figure 1.2 expresses this situation in geographical terms, showing where the
exceedance of the EU limit for PM10 is reported.
The situation is quite similar for other traditional pollutant such as NOx and only
slightly more complex for Ozone, as shown in Fig. 1.3.
G. Guariso
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
M. Volta (&)
Università degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy
e-mail: marialuisa.volta@unibs.it
© The Author(s) 2017
G. Guariso and M. Volta (eds.), Air Quality Integrated Assessment,
PoliMI SpringerBriefs, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33349-6_1
1