smog

The first hearing of the so-called "Smog trial" took place in Turin on Tuesday 18 June first trial for eco-defendants ever carried out in Italy.Among the accused are the former mayors of the Piedmontese capital Chiara Appendino and Piero Fassino, as well as the former president of the Piedmont Region Sergio Chiamparino.According to the accusations, between 2015 and 2019, they did not put in place adequate measures to guarantee the protection of air quality of the city of Turin, which today appears to be among the Municipalities more at risk for this type of pollution.For this reason, public administrators are charged with the crime of negligent environmental pollution.According to the prosecutor's consultants, the concentrations above the legal limits of the pollutants recorded in the Turin area would have caused over a thousand premature deaths and several hospital admissions.A second line of investigation, referring to a subsequent period, also sees the current president of...

Italian cities are among the most polluted in Europe.The new indicator of air quality in European cities, published in recent days by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which examined the average levels of fine particulate matter ( PM2.5) in 372 urban centers with over 50 thousand inhabitants of the European continent.What emerges is that only 5 Italian cities - namely Sassari (6.2 μg/m3), Livorno (7.8 μg/m3), Savona (9.2 μg/m3), Battipaglia (9.6 μg/m3) , Syracuse (9.7 μg/m3) - present a "fair" air quality, while for 29 centers it is "moderate" and, for another 27, "poor".The Italian city that turned out to be the most polluted is that of Cremona, with 23.3 μg/m3, followed by Vicenza (23 μg/m3) and Padua (22.7 μg/m3). Specifically, the research – carried out thanks to the collection of data from 500 monitoring stations within the EEA member countries in the months of 2022 and 2023 - highlighted how onl...

Did you receive a mail-order package this week? Carriers in the U.S. shipped 64 packages for every American in 2022, so it’s quite possible. That commerce reflects the expansion of large-scale retail in recent decades, especially big-box chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Home Depot that sell goods both in stores and online. This has led to the growth of distribution centers that fulfill these orders. While mail-order commerce is convenient, these centers also have harmful impacts, including traffic congestion and air and water pollution. I study environmental history, and I am part of a group of scholars examining the environmental impacts of big-box stores like Walmart, Target, REI and Bass Pro Shops. Sustainability is a hot topic in the retail sector, but my research on the history of Target – the sixth-largest retailer in the U.S. – shows how retail companies have largely escaped the kinds of environmental regulations that affect other sectors such...

Frosinone, Turin and Treviso are the cities most at risk of smog in Italy.This is what emerged from the new Legambiente report Mal'Aria di città 2024, drawn up as part of the Clean Cities Campaign, which examined the 2023 data in the provincial capitals, both as regards the levels of fine particles (PM10, PM2.5) than nitrogen dioxide (NO2).“Their current levels – explains Legambiente – have been stable for several years now, in line with current legislation, but remain far from the regulatory limits that will be approved shortly by the EU, scheduled for 2030 and above all from the values ​​suggested by the Organization world health". The report of Legambiente highlighted how the fight against smog in Italian cities still has a long way to go.According to what emerged from the work of the Green Swan researchers, of the 98 cities monitored to date, 18 exceeded the current limits regulations for PM10 exceedances (35 days a year with a daily averag...

In some respects, over the last thirty years our cities, in addition to growing and hosting more and more people, have shown signs of improvement:on average, for example, grew up the separate waste collection rate (from 4.4% on average in 1994 to 62.7% in 2022) and the number and kilometers of cycle paths (from an average of 0.16m equivalents/100 inhabitants in 1998 to an average of 10.59m equivalents/100 inhabitants in 2022).However, steps forward are too small, slow and inconsistent, forced among other things to slalom between delays and interventions with stagnant behaviour.Obstacles that do not allow us to free ourselves again - or at least weaken - those urban emergencies that we have to deal with every day:smog, transport, water waste and quantity of cars in circulation.Issues which, according to Legambiente, remain the most critical to address. The average motorization rate of Italian capital cities has remained unchanged at thirty years ago, confirming itself among the highest...