HOW TO FORECAST ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION AND HEALTH RISKS

Forecasting atmospheric pollution’s possible. It’s a technology tuned by ENEA that, as explains Gabriele Zanini, Agency’s manager of Models and technologies’ department for anthropic impacts and natural risks’ reduction, allows to elaborate pollution’s forecasts in the near time with a 4×4 squared Km local detail. Forecasts are comes out every hour daily for 3-5 days on areas wide as a small Italian municipality, a detail’s level nationwide never reached before. ENEA tuned it up to sustain Environment and Health’ Ministries and local governments’ air quality’s politics and actions.

“In particular, the system allows identifying before the pollution’s severe phenomenon’ rise and duration, potentially dangerous above all for vulnerable groups, like children, elderly and people afflicted by cardiac and respiratory diseases ”.

HOW CALCULATING POLLUTION HOUR BY HOUR

Pollution’s forecast takes place throw a sophisticated mathematic models’ chain that simulate pollutants’ atmospheric conditions and chemical transformations, until calculating concentrations on an hourly basis. Essential mathematical equations are developed by “CRESCO4” supercomputer: the most powerful ENEA’s calculating infrastructure.

Pollution and health: an unavoidable pair

Pollution’s monitoring is public health attention’ synonymous. That’s why ENEA realized an interactive database about atmospheric pollution’s effects on health, able to give information about mortality for age, sex and disease even a single district’s level.

“About lost life’ months – explains Carmela Marino, Technologies and Methodologies for man’s health safety ENEA’ division’s manager – our works observed that pollution reduces every Italian’s life of 10 months on average: 14 years for people living up north, 6,6 in the central and 5,7 down south and in the islands. But more elevated mortality’s data in the north should be read considering the wider data’s availability compared to the rest of Italy”.