The air pollution “Cause of many respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as lung cancer, the impact of which has been evaluated for the whole of France at 42,000 premature deaths each year”, declared the association Ecologie sans frontières (ESF) in a press release.
In view of this alarming finding, the association has decided to pursue its legal action with the city of Paris. An initial complaint, which then consisted of an unprecedented step, had given rise to the opening of a preliminary investigation in March 2014, for “endangering others”. But despite the association’s claims, the investigation has just been closed by the Paris prosecutor’s office. This decision “disappointing, incomprehensible and worrying for future generations” according to Nadir Saïfi, vice-president of the ESF, quoted by AFP.
“Since the prosecution does not seem to want to worry the main people responsible for pollution, we are going to be a civil party before the examining magistrate, ”announced the association. This considers that the Paris prosecutor’s office “does not deny” the “catastrophic impact on public health” of air pollution, but that “its investigation was cut short as soon as it came to looking for it. the responsibles. “For its part, the association concedes that” the sources of pollution are multiple “. However, “this complexity does not dilute the responsibility of each to the point of making it disappear: several authors can be responsible for the same offense”, underlines Ecologie sans frontières.
With this new approach, ESF wishes to put an end to “the impunity enjoyed by the French public authorities in their deliberate failure to deal with this major public health problem. “
“Economically, studies are starting to show that air pollution generates costs of tens of billions of euros,” said Nadir Saïfi, vice-president of the association and parliamentary adviser. “There are 750,000 days of sick leave linked to air pollution. “
In 2014, when the first complaint was filed, Paris and several French regions had experienced pollution peaks very important, so much so that the capital had decided to introduce alternating traffic for the first time since 1997. The complaint was then based on the increasingly precise link established by numerous scientific studies between air pollution and certain respiratory diseases (asthma, bronchiolitis) and cancers.
Read also :
Infographic: all you need to know about air pollution
Air pollution: between 1 and 2 billion euros in medical costs per year in France
Air pollution: it reduces the weight of babies at birth
