Sardinia is the Italian city where you can breathe the cleanest air. The confirmation comes from the update of the data collected by the AEA, the European Environment Agency, which also underlines that there is still a lot to do about smog, not only in Italy but throughout Europe.
If you apply the strictest guidelines in the world, which are those of the WHO, which recommend a limit of 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air for long-term exposure to PM2.5, the quality of the air is good. only in 11 cities across Europe: 3% of the 344 urban centers monitored.
The first in the rankings, based on this criterion, are Umeå in Sweden and Faro and Funchal in Portugal. The only capital to enter the top eleven is Stockholm.
While, according to the Aea ranking, the Italian city with the cleanest air is Sassari , in sixteenth place, with 5.5 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter. Livorno follows, with 8.4. Genoa and Salerno are in the sufficiency group, just under 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
The big cities of the south central like Rome, Naples and Palermo are placed in the mediocrity range. All the agglomerations of the Po Valley are classified in the grouping of centers with poor quality air.
Still looking to 2021, Cremona and Padua, together with the Polish city of Nowy Sacz, were the only three urban centers in Europe to have exceeded the annual EU limit threshold for fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) in the atmosphere. .
Aea has also published the annual report on the EU emissions inventory 1990-2020, which shows a continuing, albeit with a recent slowdown, downward trend in emissions of six air pollutants: carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrogen oxides. , non-methane volatile organic compounds, sulfur oxides and particulates.
Particularly difficult to reduce are ammonia emissions from farms, which have shown the smallest decline since 1990, and remain concentrated in France, Germany, Italy and Spain (57% of the EU total).
(Unioneonline / ss)
