New project to determine how pollution impacts European citizens
Global Action Plan has joined a new EU-funded project Atmopolis, which will integrate environmental and social sciences to understand how air and noise pollution exposure affects the diversity of citizens across European cities and propose action to help improve quality of life.
Atmopolis will create an integrated tool that allows cities to test different mitigation policies to understand their impact on pollution, health and carbon emissions, and their economic costs. The project will count on citizen participation to collect environmental and community data from five European cities, bringing a social perspective often missing in environmental and urban planning studies.
Air and noise pollution are environmental and health risk factors with wide-ranging impacts that vary across cities. According to European Union (EU) estimates, exposure to air pollution concentrations above recommended limits of air pollutants such as PM2.5, NO₂ and O₃, were estimated to be responsible for 357,000 deaths in the EU in 2022. The EU also estimates that long-term exposure to noise pollution is responsible for 48,000 new cases of heart disease and around 12,000 premature deaths every year in Europe.
The impacts of pollution are not equally shared and vary across individuals depending on cultural and socioeconomic factors, amongst others. Understanding the complexity of urban systems, and their barriers and opportunities to action, are key to address the negative effects of pollution through improved mitigation measures.
The project is a joint effort of 14 partners which will conduct research across cities including London (UK), Łódź (Poland), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Podgorica (Montenegro), and Tampere (Finland). With an approximate budget of €5 million, the project is funded under the Horizon Europe call “Zero-Pollution Cities”, contributing to the objectives of the EU Mission “Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities 2030”.
Global Action Plan will be providing advisory input to the air pollution and noise pollution studies and helping to develop mitigation measures. We will also support in engaging people with the study and disseminating the results, particularly in London where we have worked with affected communities for many years.
Air pollution is the single greatest environmental health threat in the EU, and noise pollution the third. ATMOPOLIS will identify the measures that can lead to the greatest reductions their exposure and negative health impacts, while also considering co-benefits for the climate. By working with cities and citizens, we will work to support action to implement these measures using both top-down policy and bottom-up behavioural change and awareness.
Jonathon Taylor, project coordinator and Associate Professor at Tampere University