SPAIN'S National Research Council has responded to Madrid's regional president with facts and figures after she claimed that 'nobody has died from air pollution'.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the right-wing PP party, insisted that the region was 'doing things properly' to ensure 'greener and cleaner towns', that evidence of this was that 'nobody had died' from contaminated air, so there was 'no need to create public alarm'.
It was Díaz Ayuso's first interview of 2020, with Cadena Ser radio.
“Madrid is one of the cities with the highest life expectancy in the world, with one of the best transport systems, and more and more people and businesses are replacing their vehicles and heating systems,” she said.
“The most important thing is to use more public transport and pedestrianise tourist-heavy areas.”
Since the PP gained power in the city council as well as in the region, the car-free zone in the middle of Madrid has come under threat, causing uproar among the public who want to keep the traffic ban and breathe in clean air.
But Díaz Ayuso and city mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida say air pollution in the metropolitan area should be 'dealt with gradually, bit by bit'.
The National Research Council (CSIC) published a thread on Twitter packed with data, articles and interviews of scientific nature to demonstrate 'unequivocally' that air pollution causes death as well as health problems.
It is universally known that over seven million people on earth die every year from air pollution – over one in 1,000 of the planet's inhabitants – and even though the actual percentage of the population differs between regions and countries, it would average nearly 3,224 deaths annually in the main hub of the city and 6,500 in the wider metropolitan area as a direct cause of breathing in unclean air, based upon these figures cited by the World Health Organisation.
This does not include the number of indirectly-caused illnesses and deaths, through air pollution aggravating pre-existing conditions.
Particles breathed in by people living in polluted areas – typically inner cities with heavy traffic – known as PM10 and capable of penetrating the lungs, as well as the finer PM2.5 particles which enter the bloodstream are associated with an increase in short-term mortality of between 0.44% and 0.68%, CSIC researcher Aurelio Tobias reveals.
“Those mainly affected are older residents and those with pre-existing health conditions,” he explains.
“Where they live in areas of high air pollution, they tend to die days, months or even years earlier than they otherwise would.”
The CSIC also tweeted an interview with the World Health Organisation's María Neira, who says breathing in polluted air is a direct cause of strokes – and 80% of people worldwide who live in cities are in this position.
International research has confirmed the connection between air pollution and mortality, the CSIC says – an analysis of 652 cities present a greater risk of death following exposure to 'even very small levels' of particles.
Barcelona city council has gone the opposite way to Madrid – from yesterday (New Year's Day), it has banned the most-polluting vehicles from an area of the city centre 20 times the size of the so-called Madrid Central traffic-free zone.
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