Smog is suffocating Italy's cities and causing untold damage to the public's health, a report by national environmental protection agency APAT revealed Thursday.
It showed that the daily limit for fine-particle, or PM10, pollution was exceeded at 77% of monitoring stations around the country.
PM10 pollution, which consists of particles measuring 10 micrometres or less, contributes to a number of respiratory problems and is thought to cause over 8,000 deaths in Italy annually. The particles are so small the human body's natural filters - such as nose hairs - cannot stop them entering the lungs. The most common effects are asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular problems.
APAT said heavy traffic was the biggest cause of fine-particle pollution in most Italian cities. In Rome, where three new cars hit the road every hour, traffic is to blame for 70% of PM10 levels. The report showed that nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels were too high in urban areas as well, although carbon monoxide and lead levels were under control. Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said that addressing the "emergency" depicted in the study should be the government's top priority.
"The Italian people are more interested in having fewer cancer cases caused by smog than they are in hearing about economic liberalization and government polemics every day," he commented.
Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici called for local and regional authorities to get together with central government to combat the problem. "Pollution remains a national emergency," said Domenici, who is also head of the Italian association of city councils (ANCI). "We have to implement an effective urban public transport policy, pooling our resources in a common strategy". Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni sees public transport as the key too.
"The first step in the fight against this phenomenon is to equip our cities with metro systems that become as appealing to use as a car," said Veltroni, who also called on central government to do more to help cities boost their public transport infrastructure.
"Over the next four years we are going to show that Rome too can have a decent metro system, with five new stations in 2010 and 22 more in 2011".
Veltroni ruled out the prospect of introducing a toll on traffic entering the capital, like the one up and running in London. He claimed the toll had been ineffective in solving London's traffic problems. Italian farm association Coldiretti said the report showed the nation should invest more in the development of biofuels.
Coldiretti said the use of biofuels produced by Italian-grown sunflowers could cut fine-particle pollution down by 50%. It would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help Italy meet its Kyoto protocol commitments to combat global warming.
In recent years several Italian cities have held occasional 'no-car' days in a bid to bring PM10 levels down. But many environmentalists and motorists say such one-off measures fail to confront the real problem.
