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Cleaning Europe's air
As commutes dropped during coronavirus lockdowns, many of Europe’s city-dwellers breathed cleaner air. In July, Horizon takes a look closer look at our air pollution problem, what it is, how it affects human health and whether now is the time to make the move to greener transport. We spoke to social epidemiologist Dr Basile Chaix about what it will take to capitalise on the post-coronavirus calls for greener cities to really change our urban spaces – and transport habits. We dissect the properties of particulate matter to understand how characteristics such as particle size or number relate to toxicity, and what they do to human cells. With wildfires known to strike particularly in the summer, we look at how scientists are tracking this lesser-known source of air pollution to better understand the impact on human health. And we find out how a soybean-related asthma outbreak in 1980s Spain is influencing air pollution research today.
The NEMO project is testing a completely new remote sensing technology that can measure emissions as well as noise from individual road vehicles in real time. © NEMO

European Mobility Week, the European Commission’s flagship awareness raising campaign on sustainable urban mobility, kicked off 16 September. Reducing air pollution from vehicles has been an important focus of the campaign since its launch 20 years ago. Yet despite significant progress, it’s an issue where sustained effort and innovation remain in high demand. A completely new European-based technology is poised to deliver a solution that could bring us one step closer to a zero-pollution Europe.

Air pollution standards currently focus on the mass concentration of particles smaller than 10 micrometres in diameter (PM10) or smaller than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5). Image credit - Panek/Wikimedia, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0

Current regulations on air pollution mainly focus on the mass of particles of a particular size range in a sample, and this has been used as a marker for their threat to human health. But these air quality standards do not address the medical implications of the very smallest particles – nor other attributes that may be damaging, such as their chemical makeup.

Smoke from wildfires can rise many kilometres into the stratosphere and cause air pollution in areas far away from where the flames actually were. Image credit - Pixabay/Saiho, licenced under Pixabay licence

Enormous plumes of smoke thrown into the atmosphere by uncontrolled wildfires may be affecting the health of people living hundreds of miles away.

90% of brain development happens by the age of four, so scientists want to understand the effects of air pollution at the earliest stages of life. Image credit - Unsplash/Pixabay, licenced under Unsplash licence

The emergency rooms in Barcelona were collapsing under the pressure. Hundreds of patients were arriving in desperate need as they struggled to breathe, while intensive care units struggled to cope with the sudden influx of respiratory problems. Epidemiologists scrambled to trace the source of the outbreak.

Moving people from cars to other forms of mobility is ‘extremely complex’, partly because there are powerful lobbies resisting change, says Dr Chaix. Image credit - Basile Chaix

People in cities experienced cleaner air during lockdowns, but a permanent shift to greener modes of transport and habits is ‘extremely complex to achieve’ given how much space is devoted to cars and the groups resisting change, says Dr Basile Chaix, who studies the health trade-offs we make as we travel.

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