Santé publique France has published three studies which reassess the impact of fine particle pollution in France.
In France, data on air pollution with fine particles is being refined and updated. Three new studies published by Public Health France on Tuesday return to the health impact of this type of pollution. They confirm elements already well informed in the literature but do not stop there, since the analysis provides several information specific to the French territory.
48,000 deaths per year
First observation: mortality linked to particulate pollution is still just as high. In 2000, deaths attributed to exposure to fine particulate matter PM2.5 were estimated at 40,000 per year in France. A new quantitative health impact assessment (EQIS) assesses this burden at 48,000 deaths per year (9% of mortality), ie a loss of life expectancy at 30 years that can exceed 2 years.
“Previously, the data was based on American epidemiological studies,” explains Sylvia Medina, director of the Science and Environment department at Public Health France, who coordinated the work. We did not have large enough cohorts to have our own data, which has not been the case since 2013 ”.
These new figures, obtained from French epidemiological data, are therefore closer to reality. “However, they confirm the order of magnitude established in previous work, which is rather reassuring! “
Big cities, countryside: all polluted
In addition, the French agency provides valuable information on pollution levels in several types of city – agglomerations, medium-sized towns, rural areas, etc. The data reveal the presence of an exposure everywhere in France, whether one is immersed in the toxic grayness of Paris or that one breathes the fresh air of the countryside.
“In urban areas of more than 100,000 inhabitants, the results show, on average, a loss of 15 months of life expectancy at 30 years due to PM2.5. », Specifies Public Health France. This loss of life expectancy is established at ten months in areas between 2,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, and nine months in rural areas.
“We know that there is pollution outside built-up areas, but we could not objectify it, because the devices used to monitor pollution rates are very expensive and we only post them in areas with high densities of population, explains Sylvia Medina. From now on, we can objectively assess this pollution outside the built-up area ”.
34,000 preventable deaths
If the results are not encouraging, however, we must not give in to fate. The agency has carried out several scenarios for reducing atmospheric pollution and measured the associated health impact.
Through modeling, the work was able, for example, to establish that “if all the municipalities succeeded in reaching the levels of PM2.5 observed in the 5% of the least polluted communes of the same class of urbanization, 34,000 deaths could be avoided each year (average gain of 9 months of life expectancy) ”, specifies Public Health France.
The not-so-toxic peaks
Another lesson from this work: chronic exposure to fine particles is much more toxic than exposure to pollution peaks such as recorded in large cities on days of heavy traffic, or during heat episodes.
The agency thus carried out a study in 17 cities in France in order to calculate the health impact of pollution peaks. “The results confirm the monitoring work carried out so far: it is exposure to pollution, daily and over time, which has the greatest impact on health, with peaks in pollution having a marginal effect. “.
Moreover, if pollution peaks provide us with overall information on the state of the air we breathe, the notion of threshold does not hold for PM2.5. “There are no levels below which we would be protected, the effects on health emerge at very low thresholds,” explains Sylvia Medina. This is why we must act by reducing our recourse to fossil fuels through long-term policies, but also by modifying our individual behavior ”.
Indisputable data
If the experts have chosen to focus on PM only2.5is that they constitute a privileged marker for studying atmospheric pollution, an otherwise complex phenomenon. “PM2.5 have their own effect, but they also tell us about the other polluting molecules present in the air with them, ”explains Sylvia Medina. Among them, ozone, nitrogen oxide, PM10 or secondary pollutants.
Unlike other sources of exposure (pesticides, endocrine disruptors, industrial pollution, etc.), air pollution is the best informed to date. “Science no longer needs to prove a causal link with observed health effects. This was not the case 20 years ago, but today there is a scientific consensus on this toxicity ”.
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