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The EU wants to set tough new pollution standards for cars; automakers are aghast, but health lobbies argue that updated Euro 7 rules will save lives.
“The modelling shows that strong Euro 7 legislation could prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths per year,” said Cale Lawlor, senior policy manager for global public health with the European Public Health Alliance, an NGO. “This legislation needs to be implemented urgently to prevent this massive burden.”
Magnus Everitt is well aware of the negative impact of car pollution. The Stockholm resident starts his mornings with a cocktail of medicines that keep him breathing.
First, there are the pills. Then, the 67-year-old retired engineer spends 20 minutes inhaling three treatments designed to break up the mucus in his lungs and quiet the inflammation in his airways. There’s also the lunch-time regimen, and the evening ritual. All in all, Everitt spends over 40 minutes a day taking medicines to manage his lung diseases, which include asthma.
For years, Everitt says his coughing would worsen within minutes of being near his office on a high-traffic road in Stockholm. It prompted him to quit.
“I said to my boss: ‘I don’t want to die here. I can’t work here anymore. I’m done,'” Everitt said.
Euro 7 is designed to prevent situations like that.
The proposal sets detailed emission limits for new vehicles, aiming to force the industry to deploy technology that will reduce everything from nitrogen oxides to particulate matter, exactly the kind of fine dust that gets trapped in human tissue and is associated with everything from lung disease to dementia and premature mortality.
But the auto industry, along with big car countries, argue the standards are unnecessary given that the EU has already agreed to essentially end the sale of new combustion engine cars by 2035.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association argues that replacing existing Euro 6 standards with Euro 7 isn’t needed because the sale of combustion engine cars will start to tail off before 2035. That means the new rules will apply to a small number of vehicles while driving up their costs and saddling carmakers with extra expenses as they’re investing in switching to electric cars, according to the lobby.
“If the Euro 7 proposal is adopted without significant amendments of substance, it will force manufacturers to divert valuable resources from the development and engineering of new zero-emission vehicles back to further development of vehicles with internal combustion engines,” it says.
Don’t hold your breath
That lament is finding favor with some members of the European Parliament and with European countries pushing to delay implementation of Euro 7 past the 2025 date proposed by the European Commission. The argument is that industry needs more time to adapt to selling updated models.
While tweaking the date in an otherwise sprawling piece of legislation — which for the first time also regulates brake dust, tire microplastic abrasion and electric vehicle battery durability — might not seem like a big deal, every year of delay means that the current weaker standards will apply to the more than 10 million cars sold annually in the EU.
That means today’s pollution problem, endemic in many big cities, will hang around.
The problems are even more acute in congested business districts such as Brussels’ European Quarter.
The European Environment Agency’s latest air quality report found that 97 percent of the EU’s urban populations are exposed to higher levels of fine particulate matter pollution than permitted under World Health Organization guidelines. It said 238,000 premature deaths were attributable to that pollution.
Much of that comes from energy production and industry, with road transport accounting for about 10 percent of particulate matter pollution, the agency said.
However it is produced, air pollution is the most important environmental factor influencing human health, said Barbara Hoffmann, professor of environmental epidemiology at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University. It causes lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It can also trigger acute flares of both diseases, Hoffmann, who is also a medical doctor, added.
Hoffmann and her colleagues did a study in which they found that people who live close to busy roads were 50 percent more likely to have a serious buildup of plaque in their heart vessels — called coronary atherosclerosis — than people who live further away. Short episodes of exposure to air pollution can also trigger heart attacks.
As the negative health effects of smog have become better understood, lifestyle changes become more commonplace.
Since leaving his job, Everitt says his coughing and shortness of breath are better, though he still has to take his daily medicines. To manage his illness, he tries to avoid going to areas he knows will be very polluted.
He isn’t alone.
In Amsterdam, Dominique Hamerlijnck, who also has asthma and works as a patient expert, does the same. Air pollution has a big impact on her symptoms, too. “I would try to avoid any busy road in Amsterdam with a lot of traffic and choose, even if it’s longer, to use a smaller road because that already decreases the exposure,” she said.
They have no doubt about the need to clean up the air.
“It affects a lot of people,” Everitt said. “Many thousands of people are dying every year [due] to air pollution in Europe.”
