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The Green Lung: National Parks and Air Quality in Italian Municipalities

Becchetti, Leonardo; Beccari, Gabriele; Conzo, Gianluigi; De Santis, Davide; Conzo, Pierluigi; Salustri, Francesco; (2023) The Green Lung: National Parks and Air Quality in Italian Municipalities. Sustainability , 15 (10) , Article 7802. 10.3390/su15107802. Green open access

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Abstract

In Italy, 25 percent of the 7903 municipalities include protected areas, while 6.4 percent—which we define as park municipalities—are national parks. Using data from the Copernicus programme databases, we investigated the relationship between park municipalities and the air quality, and we found that the air pollution levels in these areas were much lower than in the rest of the municipalities for the period 2017–2020. The gross difference ranged from 25 to 30 percent lower levels of particulate matter (as measured in terms of both PM10 and PM2.5), and three times lower levels of nitrogen dioxide. In our multivariate econometric analysis, we found that part of this difference depends on the lower population density and manufacturing activity in municipalities with national parks. Furthermore, we showed that park municipalities: (i) had progressively reduced levels of particulate matter during the period 2017–2020, and (ii) had a “green lung” function, since in non-park municipalities’ air pollution levels increased with the distance from national parks. Based on empirical evidence on the impact of the main air pollutants on mortality documented in the literature, we calculated that living in park municipalities reduces mortality rates by around 10 percent.

Type: Article
Title: The Green Lung: National Parks and Air Quality in Italian Municipalities
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/su15107802
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su15107802
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
Keywords: Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Green & Sustainable Science & Technology, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Science & Technology - Other Topics, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, natural parks, natural capital, environmental health, pollution, air quality, Copernicus programme databases, LONG-TERM EXPOSURE, AMBIENT CARBON-MONOXIDE, EXTENDED FOLLOW-UP, PARTICULATE MATTER, TIME-SERIES, CARDIOVASCULAR MORTALITY, CARDIOPULMONARY MORTALITY, POLLUTION EXPOSURE, PHYSICAL-ACTIVITY, SPATIAL-ANALYSIS
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199613
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