Limiting air pollution to levels recommended by the World Health Organization could prevent more than 50,000 deaths in Europe annually, according to the research.
WHO estimates that air pollution kills more than 7 million people each year and is a major cause of illness and absence from work worldwide.
Cities, with their crowded streets and high energy consumption, are the focus of diseases and illnesses related to air pollution.
The WHO recommends that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) does not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air, on an annual average. For nitrogen dioxide
(NO2), the limit not to be exceeded is 40μg / m3.
Wednesday’s study, published in the Lancet Planetary Health, estimated the burden of premature death from these two pollutants in nearly 1,000 cities across Europe.
He found that reducing PM2.5 and NO2 to safe WHO levels could prevent 51,213 premature deaths each year.
Nearly 125,000 deaths annually could be saved if air pollution levels were reduced to the lowest recorded in the study, the authors said.
Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, of the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal), said the research “proves that many cities are still not doing enough to combat air pollution”.
“Levels above WHO guidelines are leading to unnecessary deaths,” he said.
Using city-specific data in air pollution models combined with mortality numbers, the researchers formed a “mortality burden score” by ranking individual cities from best to worst.
Deaths due to air pollution varied widely, with NO2 levels in Madrid, for example, accounting for 7% of annual deaths there. The cities in the Po Valley region in northern Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic were the highest in mortality burden, with the Italian cities of Brescia, Bergamo and Vicenza all among the top five for PM2.5 concentrations.
Those with the lowest mortality burden included Tromso in Norway, Umea in Sweden and Oulu in Finland, as well as the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik.
On average, 84% of the population in the cities studied was exposed to PM2.5 levels above the WHO guideline. Nine percent were exposed to NO above recommendedtwo levels, the study found.
Sasha Khomenko, co-author of the ISGlobal study, said it was important to implement local measures to reduce emissions in light of the high variability in mortality associated with poor air.
“We need an urgent shift from private motorized traffic to public and active transport (e) a reduction in emissions from industry, airports and ports,” she said.
Khomenko also said that a ban on burning domestic firewood and coal would help in highly polluted cities in central Europe, and called for more trees and green spaces in urban areas.
• This article was amended on January 20, 2021. An earlier version mistakenly called nitrogen dioxide as “nitrous oxide”.