[An estimate of health impacts of air pollution reduction]

The relation between both the long-term and short-term concentrations of atmospheric particulate matter and mortality appears to be linear, with no evidence for either a threshold effect or a short-term forward shift in mortality (harvesting). With these premises we estimated the effects of limited reduction in air pollution. As an example, in the city of Milano, Italy, 1,178 deaths annually are attributed to long-term air pollution. If mean annual particulate matter concentration in the city were reduced by just 10%, there would be an immediate reduction of 31 deaths per year from natural causes and after 3 or 4 years the reduction would be of the order of 210 deaths per year from natural causes, 27 of which would have died from lung cancer. It is concluded that reducing the exposure of the population to atmospheric air pollution would be an important means of reducing mortality in general and lung cancer mortality in particular.