The WHO (World Health Organisation) published on Tuesday 28 April a report on the human and financial costs of air pollution. This estimate, which concerns 53 countries in Europe and Asia, mentions 600,000 induced illnesses and premature deaths, and evaluates the cost at more than 1,000 billion euros.

Source: www.novethic.fr

Atmospheric cancer is the disease of the century!

We will die from not breathing.

You cannot escape the air you breathe.

When the cost of energy increases, trade-offs are possible. If you have doubts about the sanitary quality of certain food products, you can change creamery. When the air quality deteriorates, what do you do? You can only escape for a minute ... before taking another deep breath. Did you know that you breathe 20 to 25,000 times a day? That is the equivalent of 12 m3 of air? When the air around you is polluted, you are perfused with 8 litres per minute! If you want another equivalent, this atmospheric cancer, you get a lungful every 30 seconds.

And when your lungs are under attack and COPD is in the top tier of chronic diseases (another estimate from our friends at the WHO) ... will you breathe with your liver?

Since 1986, we know that clouds no longer stop at borders, and neither does air pollution. And it doesn't matter, because the good news is that we don't even need to import this air pollution, we produce it ourselves, locally. When it comes to air pollution, we are atmospherically independent, we produce it ourselves, a good local pollution production, made in France.

For a long time now, we have been aware of the link between environmental risks, particularly those linked to various forms of pollution, and their consequences in terms of health risks. Air pollution is without doubt the most visible - paradoxically - and most immediately challenging phenomenon. No one can escape it, it is a "fair" pollution in the sense that it affects everyone, rich and poor, it is a long-term pollution but it kills as of today (see the repeated WHO reports), and it is a pollution that hits where it hurts: a/ our health (mine, my children's, not the - distant - health of the biosphere or the polar bears) b/ the public cost linked to public health impacts and c/ the economic competitiveness (absenteeism, lower work rates, loss of attractiveness ...).

For all these reasons, this air pollution is both very insidious... and very virtuous:

• it thwarts the theories of the climatoseptics (who could argue that air pollution is not due to human activities?)
• it forces politicians to act (theoretically);
• it brings us closer to environmental deadlines that are often perceived as very long term;
• it costs, in lives, in currency, in competitiveness, in productivity (which is why China is so concerned about it);
• it is directly experienced and suffered by public opinion, which is less and less tolerant of it and makes this known to the "decision-makers";
• it is an accelerator of alternative innovations ...

See on Scoop.it – Alain Renaudin