ENVIRONMENT-FRANCE: Pollution Too Killed Thousands

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Sep 4 2003 (IPS) - It was not just the heat; pollution contributed to thousands of deaths in the heat wave in France last month, health experts say.

"Between 1,000 and 3,000 people died in France last month due to human- made pollution," Jean-Felix Bernard, president of the French National Council on Air told IPS.

The French government has admitted that more than 11,000 people died in the first half of August due to temperatures that rose to 43 degrees Celsius in the south-west, about ten degrees above average. In Paris, temperatures touched 40 degrees, against an August average of 33 degrees.

Over this period the meteorological agency France Météo also recorded new peaks of poisonous gases, including ozone, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and methane in major French cities, Bernard said.

"In Strasburg at the border with Germany, record high levels of pollution were recorded on 28 consecutive days in August," Bernard said. "In Paris, we measured peaks of ozone and carbon dioxide over ten consecutive days. We have never seen such levels before."

Recent experience has shown that pollution is among the main causes of death in cities under extreme hot temperatures, Bernard said. "We know now that heat and pollution acting together, kill."

Jean-Pierre Besancenot, epidemiologist at the University of Dijon, and specialist on the effect of heat on human health, also says pollution made the heat worse. "The heat wave that we experienced and the pollution accumulated in the cities’ atmosphere reinforced each other’s effects," Besancenot told IPS.

"Research shows that during a heat wave, deaths caused by high body temperatures are negligible compared to deaths caused by heart and respiratory complications," Besancenot said. "Pollution is the major cause of these deadly complications."

The deadly impact of pollution on people suffering from respiratory and heart conditions had become apparent during a heat wave in Athens in 1987 and one in London in 1995, Besancenot said.

In 1987, a hot summer led to the death of 2,000 people in the Greek capital.

"In 1988, the Greek authorities placed a ban on automobiles and on industrial activities in Athens," he said. "The result was that the death toll shrank considerably."

The government should learn a lesson from these experiences, and try to reduce pollution, Bernard said. "As far as I know, pollution is caused by human activities," Bernard said. "If we want to avoid similar catastrophes, we have to make changes, especially concerning gas emissions from automobiles and industry."

Mireille Ferry, spokesperson for the environmentalist Green Party, made a similar demand. "An automobile designed to travel at 200 kilometres per hour (km/h) consumes 20 percent more fuel in the city than an automobile with lower power, even if it travels at only 50 km/h."

Governments should set limits to the power of automobiles, Ferry told IPS. "But the very first thing to do is to reduce the role of automobiles in the cities."

Automobile emissions are a prime cause of higher concentrations of poisonous gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide. Automobile emissions in high atmospheric temperatures also create ozone.

The present pollution limits in European countries are meaningless, Ferry said. In France, the limit for ozone concentration is 360 micrograms per cubic metre of air. This limit was not reached last month, despite the high levels of persistent pollution registered.

Environmental activists have called for a lowering of this limit to half the present level. This should consequently lead to curbs on use of automobiles in cities, they say.

Crossing these limits can at present lead only to a non-binding request to lower driving speeds in cities.