Modelling the air quality benefits of EU climate mitigation policies using two different PM2.5-related health impact methodologies

The EU, seeking to be a global leader in the fight against climate change, is moving ahead with ambitious policies to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions. In this context, the Fit for 55 package (FF55) is a set of proposals to revise and update EU legislation, to ensure that policies are in line with the climate goals of cutting emissions by at least 55% by 2030. Whilst these policies are designed for climate purposes, they will have positive side-effects (co-benefits) on air quality. Separately, additional policies are also in place to reduce emissions of related air pollutants and to improve air quality concentrations on EU territory. In this work, through a modelling study, we analyse the benefits of these policies via the health benefits arising from the resulting reductions in yearly average PM2.5 concentrations. Results are analysed by assessing and comparing morbidity and mortality impacts as computed using both the HRAPIE (Health risks of air pollution in Europe, WHO, as implemented in the CaRBonH model) and the GBD (Global Burden of Disease, as implemented in FASST-GBD model) approaches. Even when considering the uncertainty and variability in the results obtained using the two approaches, it is clear that EU policies can bring health and economic benefit in EU, with several Billions of Euro of benefits both in terms of morbidity and mortality indicators.

Air pollutant emissions from global food systems are responsible for environmental impacts, crop losses and mortality

Food systems are important contributors to global emissions of air pollutants. Here, building on the EDGAR-FOOD database of greenhouse gas emissions, we estimate major air pollutant compounds emitted by different stages of the food system, at country level, during the past 50 years, resulting from food production, processing, packaging, transport, retail, consumption and disposal. Air pollutant estimates from food systems include total nitrogen and its components (N₂O, NH₃ and NO_x), SO₂, CO, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) and particulate matter (PM₁₀, PM_2.5, black carbon and organic carbon). We show that 10% to 90% of air pollutant emissions come from food systems, resulting from steady increases over the past five decades. In 2018, more than half of total N (and 87% of ammonia) emissions come from food systems and up to 35% of particulate matter. Food system emissions are responsible for about 22.4% of global mortality due to poor air quality and 1.4% of global crop production losses.

Costs of air pollution impact on health in the Western Balkans: preliminary results

Air pollution is the main environmental driver associated with health. It is well documented that poor air quality is responsible for increased risk of mortality and morbidity. The social cost of mortality in 2015 was estimated in 3 trillion (OECD, 2016). The Western Balkans (WB) comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia covering area of 218 750 km2 and a population of 19.9 million with total GDP of €94.2 billion (Banja et al., 2020). The WB was selected for this study because it is one of the air pollution hotspots in Europe where the levels of PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and O3 are frequently above the EU Air Quality Directive guidelines. This situation has been associated with a higher proportion of premature deaths attributable to air pollution exposure (4-19% of total deaths) in this region compared to EU member states (EEA, 2021). The health impacts including mortality and morbidity were estimated for particulate matter PM2.5, ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at country and city level on the basis of exposure in 2019 derived from monitoring stations and model estimations. Mortality impacts were parameterised using the number of premature deaths. Morbidity costs included: chronic bronchitis, hospital admissions due to respiratory diseases, hospital admissions due to cardiovascular diseases, bronchitis in children, asthma in children, reduced activity days and work lost days. The costs of mortality attributable to air pollution were estimated on the basis of non-market welfare based methods (WTP approach) while morbidity costs were estimated mainly with market based methods combining both direct and indirect costs. The 2019 health costs, both per capita and as share of the GDP, associated with air pollution in the WB were considerably higher than those in EU27.

Impact of air pollution on health in South-East Europe

The Western Balkans (WB; Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) is a region next to the European Union where the levels of air pollution are among the highest of Europe and transboundary pollution with neighbouring countries is frequent. The estimated PM2.5 average exposure index in the WB is above the exposure concentration obligation (20 µg/m3) of Directive EU/2008/50. In this study, the TM5-FAst Scenario Screening Tool (TM5-FASST) was used to estimate the trends of air quality impacts on health, from 2000 to 2050 in the WB. To that end, five ECLIPSE 6b emission scenarios with different assumptions on population growth, deployment of technologies and policies were compared. Mortality from PM2.5 and ozone were calculated using the integrated exposure-response model (IER) and a log-linear exposure-response function, respectively, in line with the Global Burden of Disease assessment for 2017. The implementation of the maximum feasible reduction (MFR) scenarios in the WB would lead to a decrease in the mortality associated with PM2.5 of 49% - 65% in 2050 compared to the current legislation baseline (CLE). On the contrary, no further control (NFC) scenarios would cause an increase in PM2.5 mortality of 16% - 21% in 2050 compared to the CLE. Furthermore, compared to the CLE baseline in 2050, lack of action would lead to an 11% - 21% increase in mortality in neighbouring countries, due to transboundary pollution originating in the WB region. As a whole, the study confirms that implementing the adopted policies would lead to a reduction of the air pollution impacts in the coming decades and provides estimates of the maximum benefits expected from ambitious policies and the impact of not implementing the currently adopted ones.

(* This designation is without prejudice to position on status and is in line with the UNSCR 1244/99 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.)

Comment to the paper "Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality", by Ogen, 2020

In this paper we critically review the work "Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality" (Ogen, 2020), stressing the fact that we think there are flaws in the published methodology. We do this as we think it is important, given the current deluge of 'COVID-19 related' publications, to clearly define what can be stated and what on the contrary, cannot be stated, due to limitations in terms of data quality and/or methodology.

The global atmospheric environment for the next generation

Air quality, ecosystem exposure to nitrogen deposition, and climate change are intimately coupled problems: we assess changes in the global atmospheric environment between 2000 and 2030 using 26 state-of-the-art global atmospheric chemistry models and three different emissions scenarios. The first (CLE) scenario reflects implementation of current air quality legislation around the world, while the second (MFR) represents a more optimistic case in which all currently feasible technologies are applied to achieve maximum emission reductions. We contrast these scenarios with the more pessimistic IPCC SRES A2 scenario. Ensemble simulations for the year 2000 are consistent among models and show a reasonable agreement with surface ozone, wet deposition, and NO2 satellite observations. Large parts of the world are currently exposed to high ozone concentrations and high deposition of nitrogen to ecosystems. By 2030, global surface ozone is calculated to increase globally by 1.5 +/- 1.2 ppb (CLE) and 4.3 +/- 2.2 ppb (A2), using the ensemble mean model results and associated +/-1 sigma standard deviations. Only the progressive MFR scenario will reduce ozone, by -2.3 +/- 1.1 ppb. Climate change is expected to modify surface ozone by -0.8 +/- 0.6 ppb, with larger decreases over sea than over land. Radiative forcing by ozone increases by 63 +/- 15 and 155 +/- 37 mW m(-2) for CLE and A2, respectively, and decreases by -45 +/- 15 mW m(-2) for MFR. We compute that at present 10.1% of the global natural terrestrial ecosystems are exposed to nitrogen deposition above a critical load of 1 g N m(-2) yr(-1). These percentages increase by 2030 to 15.8% (CLE), 10.5% (MFR), and 25% (A2). This study shows the importance of enforcing current worldwide air quality legislation and the major benefits of going further. Nonattainment of these air quality policy objectives, such as expressed by the SRES-A2 scenario, would further degrade the global atmospheric environment.