The Paris balloon slowly rises above André-Citroën Park (XVe). Like every day, this tourist attraction, which also serves as a tool for measuring air quality, takes curious passengers 150 meters above the ground. The monuments are slowly revealed in the azure blue sky of this Tuesday morning. However, a slight haze still covers the northeast of the capital. “It’s much clearer to the west,” notes one of the passengers.
Could the air be less pure in the east of the capital? That is at least what the new maps unveiled on the occasion of National Air Quality Day, which takes place this Saturday, seem to show. Since 2018, around 500 Parisian electric delivery vehicles have been equipped with Pollutrack sensors that measure the real-time concentration of PM 2.5 (fine particles with a diameter equal to or less than 2.5 microns).
This type of pollution, caused by wood heating, traffic, construction sites, and more, has a strong health impact. A study conducted by the Île-de-France Regional Health Observatory (ORS) and Airparif shows, among other things, that 6,220 deaths in Île-de-France in 2019 were “attributable to prolonged exposure to fine particulate matter PM 2.5 (compared to 10,350 in 2010).”
Based on data collected over the past five years, Jean-Baptiste Renard, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), has been able to establish “a new pollution map.” The Paris territory has been divided into 108 square kilometers where average concentrations of fine particles have been calculated. This method is “complementary” to the maps already produced by Airparif based on modeling, measurement campaigns, and records in six stations in the capital. “There are none on the left bank and in the northeast of Paris,” warns the physicist. “Yet, we can see that it can be heterogeneous from one place to another. Sometimes, certain areas of Paris are five times more polluted than others.”
Article Complet (En) : Paris Beacon