Toxic air seen cutting thousands of lives short each year in Europe’s cities

Tens of thousands of European city dwellers die prematurely each year due to air pollution, researchers said on Wednesday in a study ranking more than 800 cities according to the risk of early death from two leading pollutants.

Some 51,000 premature deaths from fine particulate matter and 900 from nitrogen dioxide could be prevented each year if cities reduced the pollutants to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, researchers calculated.

Madrid topped the nitrogen dioxide ranking, where researchers calculated up to 7% of all natural deaths were caused by the pollutant, followed by Antwerp, Turin, Paris and Milan. Source article here.

Photo by Jessamyn Lee on Unsplash

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