Reducing pollution in cities is good for health. And so far nothing new.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThe fact that reducing it would make its inhabitants gain at least five months of life more is a fresh fresh data that comes from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
To lead it, researchers from Bringham Young University and Harvard School of PUblic Health, taking as an example some American metropolises where measures against pollution have already been adopted for some decades.
The research took into account the level of smog and life expectancy of 51 cities between 1980 and 2000. Using sophisticated statistical models, it was found that the inhabitants, at the turn of the twenty-first century, lived 2,72 years in more than 20 years ago. And 15% of this 'gain' is due to the decrease in pollution, a cause of lung and cardiovascular disease.
In parallel, in Great Britain it has been estimated that smog is reducing the life expectancy of the population by eight months on average, despite the improvements achieved in the recent period.
Limiting emissions even further could help cut that value in half, experts note. The US analyzes focused in particular on Pm 2.5, thus measuring the levels of polluting particles with a diameter equal to one twentieth of that of a hair.
These can travel easily to the lungs and have been linked to asthma and heart disease. The researchers found that for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air decrease in Pm 2,5, people gain seven months to live.
And in some cities like Pittsburgh and Buffalo, the pollution drop was 14 micrograms per cubic meter of air. In Europe these assessments are not yet possible because the data have only recently been collected, but the efforts made in recent years are expected to bring benefits in the short term.
