By donating us $100, $50 or subscribe to Boosting $10/month – we can get this article and others in front of tens of thousands of specially targeted readers. The monitors will collect granular air quality information, allowing us to work with a never-before-accessible level of detail. The sticker color in question is, appropriately, gray -- cars wearing it will be stopped from driving in the French capital. A mid to long-term plan is in place to reduce traffic and replace diesel cars with an electric fleet, but the parisian mayoral authorities have hit many roadblocks and gone far beyond their budget. Respiratory disease has now become the third leading cause of death worldwide, behind cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and as developing countries continue to industrialize with loose regulation, the problem will only become worse. The Paris city government is investing in electric vehicles to address its serious air pollution problem. For the first time, a joint air pollution study across two mega-cities—London and Paris—measures the impact of policies designed to reduce air pollution … Air pollution is responsible for 48,000 premature deaths every year, according to the Public Health France agency. Last year, Paris attempted to curb pollution by offering free public transportation throughout the city, but it apparently wasn't very successful. If Anne Hidalgo, the city's mayor, has her way, it won't stop there. In fact, 90% of Parisians are exposed to PM2.5 above WHO guidelines (exposure of ~15 micrograms per meter cube compared to a recommended 10). In the European Union, 72,000 deaths per year are attributed to NO2 exposure. In fact. Reuters reports that a highway that straddles the Seine River will be converted into a park, too. Once connected, air pollution levels are reported instantaneously and in real-time on our maps Interestingly, the tool for measuring smoke quality was a set of 5 pieces of paper, shaded gradually from white to black. However, air quality itself remains ignored. Now, it's trying a new approach: stickers. Similar events in Pennsylvania (1948), Paris (1951) and London (1952) forced authorities to set up regulatory bodies to tackle the problem. ... Gasping For Solutions. Bloomberg Philanthropies and Mayor Hidalgo’s initiative will install 150 air pollution monitors on schools in Paris. Nitrogen dioxide pollution is responsible for 1,300 new cases of child asthma and 4,300 deaths in Paris annually. You might also like: Bioplastic: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? Air pollution has become so severe in Paris that the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo has been granted powers to implement emergency traffic bans.. © 2021 CNET, A RED VENTURES COMPANY. the greenhouse gas CO2, and toxic gases like nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide). She wants to extend the ban to vehicles registered between 2001 and 2005, which covers another 14 percent of those 32 million vehicles. Combined with more efficient transport technology, this has culminated in a broad drop in nearly all types of pollution over the city of Paris (i.e. Pedestrians stroll along Paris' famous Champs-Elysees on a Sunday in September 2015 when the city experimented with a partial ban on car traffic. Air pollution is the third leading cause of death worldwide, and most large cities, Paris included, have fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels above WHO health guidelines. In January 2017, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced plans of a new A host of literature describing the horrible conditions of blackened air and cities appears in the second half of the 19th century, as its noise and pollution became impossible to ignore.