“40,000 premature deaths per year due to poor air quality”. It is with this eloquent figure that Professor Sébastien Couraud, deputy head of the acute pulmonology department at Lyon Sud hospital, recalls the public health issue that air pollution constitutes, during a conference. announcing Atmo’s new air quality information system. The observatory created in 2016 in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is approved to monitor air quality. This, thanks to some 13 stations located throughout the territory in the Lyon metropolis alone.
Tools that continuously analyze five pollutants, explains Raphaël Desfontaines, Atmo territorial correspondent for the Lyon metropolis: “Nitrogen dioxide, mainly emitted by road traffic, fine particles (PM 2.5 and PM 10) of which ⅔ come from the residential sector with wood heating, ozone, a secondary pollutant and carbon dioxide sulfur ».
All data relating to sources of pollution (vehicle traffic, location of factories emitting pollutants, agricultural spreading) are also collected. The idea being to measure and inventory this information, before modeling it to make predictions.
In fact, the measurements are coupled to “calculation models that use meteorological data, thus making it possible to determine the concentrations breathed by citizens at any point in the Region” for the pollutants mentioned above. And thus to anticipate and predict the index of the day and that of the next day.
If just one of the pollutants is in excess, the air quality index is impacted and can give rise to an index described as “bad”, continues Raphaël Desfontaines. Because there are six degrees of air quality ranging from good to extremely bad, represented by different colors.
Winter pollution episodes are generally due to the concentration of fine particles (PM) which increase due to wood heating and thermal inversion phenomena – the absence of wind causes a concentration of pollutants. While in summer, poor air quality results from a high ozone level.
In the event of a pollution episode, an alert bulletin is sent to the Prefecture, which decides to warn the public and take measures to improve air quality and protect citizens: implementation of traffic restrictions, release of a TCL day ticket offer for three euros… To which are added recommendations, such as the reduction of outdoor sports activities and outings for vulnerable people.
Familiarize and empower citizens with regard to air quality
Unfortunately, this index – although available on the Atmo website, the Air to Go application and on nearly 1,500 TCL screens for two years – is still unknown to residents of the Lyon metropolitan area.
In order to improve its knowledge and familiarize the Lyonnais, Atmo has decided, in collaboration with the Caisse d’Epargne, to illuminate the Incity tower, at Part-Dieu, every evening, in the color of the index of air quality the next day. This, every evening, for 1h30.
This is the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of a T2 (around 7,900 kWh), underlines Eric Fournier, president of Atmo Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, defusing in advance the possible criticism on the energy cost of the project. Adding that this device, which will use energy-efficient LEDs, complies with the 3rd Lighting Plan of the City of Lyon and the recommendations booklet on private lighting.
A project which is inspired by an experiment in the Grenoble metropolis, carried out as part of the European Green Capital system in 2022, which, given its success, has been perpetuated. After the Perret Tower, it is now the pylon of the Bastille cable car which lights up every evening to inform the inhabitants of the Grenoble metropolitan area.
The solution has been very well received by residents, underlines a representative of Atmo, who announces a satisfaction survey by the end of the year.
Eric Fournier also points out the possibility of deploying the solution in a natural ecosystem. The Chamonix Valley, for example? The elected official, mayor of Chamonix (Haute-Savoie), admits to considering it, tempering an immediate launch: the goal being both to find a symbolic and visible monument while taking into account the divergence of air quality in the territory.
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A second phase will open in the Lyon metropolitan area in September 2024, with the highlighting of concrete actions to be adopted, depending on the index, to encourage beneficial daily behaviors. Namely: the use of public transport, soft mobility, or even the reduction of outdoor sports activities in the event of poor air quality.
This device comes in addition to another solution, already offered to residents of Lyon (Rhône), Grenoble (Isère) and the Arve Valley (Haute-Savoie): the free provision of mobile micro-sensors to analyze the air quality around one’s place of residence or during one’s journeys. A free initiative for users, with a simple deposit to be paid, for a loan of approximately 3 weeks. “In 2023, 300 loans were made during 11 sessions”underlines Raphaël Desfontaines. Which invites and encourages residents to take advantage of it.
A system subsidized by the metropolis of Lyon whose president, Bruno Bernard, was keen to reiterate his support for the observatory: a few weeks ago, a subsidy of 284,000 euros for 2024, an envelope slightly increased compared to 2023, was granted to Atmo.
Air quality improving but still far from WHO thresholds
Despite a few episodes of pollution announced in 2023 and during the first six months of 2024, air quality has considerably improved over the last twenty years, confirms Eric Fournier:
“The air quality in the Lyon metropolitan area has improved significantly over the past 20 years. The number of days when thresholds were exceeded has been divided by three and for two of the three pollutants monitored – nitrogen dioxide and fine particles – the thresholds have been reduced by around half. There is still a significant problem with ozone.”
However, there is still a lot of work to be done. Because even if the thresholds are decreasing, they are still very far from reaching the WHO recommendations, insists Raphaël Desfontaines:
“The regulatory values currently imposed by the European directive are respected in the metropolis of Lyon, except for nitrogen dioxide, but they are still well above the values recommended by the WHO. But they will be brought down, because the revision of the current European directive aims to get closer to the WHO thresholds.”
This must be voted on this year for entry into French law and therefore in force by 2026.
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The improvement in air quality that we are experiencing today is due to, “even if it is difficult to know in what proportion exactly – to technological improvements in the industrial sector, thanks to better filtration of pollutant emissions, to automobile traffic which complies with successive EURO emissions standards, but also to decrease in traffic in city centers with the development of public transport and soft mobility”develops the territorial correspondent of Atmo, who also assumes that part of this decline could be linked to the reduction in industrial activity over the last 20 years.
Added to this is also the ban on open fireplaces in the metropolis of Lyon, since April 2023. The City of Lyon has, moreover, recently adopted new pricing for vehicles depending on their engine and their weight as well as the composition of the household, recalls Sylvain Godinot, 2nd deputy mayor of Lyon responsible for ecological transition and heritage.
This improvement in air quality is also part of the development of atmospheric protection plans (PPA) and the climate-air-energy-territorial plan (PCAET) currently under review.
The Pfas in the crosshairs
And another subject has occupied the team of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes territorial entity for more than a year: the Pfas. These eternal, or perfluorinated, pollutants have been at the heart of a scandal since their detection, in significant quantities, in certain waters in the Lyon metropolitan area and even Grenoble.
« Seeing the concern about the pollution observed in water and soil, we took up the subject last year, to see if we could take measurements in the ambient air, reveals Raphaël Desfontaines. As there is no standardized method for analyzing PFAS in ambient air, we have initiated work to develop a method. »
A unique project in France, in which the territorial entity launched as a precursor in 2023, and in which other territorial observatories are now joining forces. As does the metropolis, which supports it.
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Atmo relies on the bibliography of what has already been measured elsewhere in the world and is part of a logic of comparison: two sensors, already in place, are used to carry out measurements for 96 hours (and not continuously), ‘one on a station which is not under the influence of pollution and the other, on a station more subject to pollution, details the territorial correspondent. If he refuses to give the geographical location of the site, there is little doubt that it is the Valley of Chemistry.
The objective is to succeed in measuring, in the particle and gas phase, and quantifying up to 50 different compounds, including those currently incriminated. According to the first results, the continuation of the work would then consist of investigating the presence of perfluorinated substances in the ambient air in different places in the region.
And again afterwards, to evaluate them. “We will need toxicological reference values that we do not currently have. There is still an incredible lack of information on the toxicology of inhaled PFAS,” he notes.
Initial results on the method are expected by the end of the year. With still, a long work to be carried out on reference values, which will surely be of the order of nanogram per m3.
