Did you know that living in a calm, green, pollution-free environment while getting some exercise in mild temperatures was good for your health? If you still doubt it, a study by Public Health France should enlighten you. In the metropolises of Lille, Rouen and Montpellier, the organization assessed that “ambitious actions on each of these environmental determinants resulted in positive impacts on health”. A door kicked open? No, because there had never been a quantitative assessment of the impact on health of these combined criteria.
Active mobility first. The metropolis of Rouen states that “if each resident aged 30 and over walked 10 minutes more every day of the week […]nearly 150 deaths could be avoided each year.” For the use of bicycles, if the people of Rouen used the bicycle for 35 trips out of 100 of 3 to 5 km, “more than 790 deaths would be avoided” per year in this metropolis. The same beneficial observation was observed in Lille and Montpellier.
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In Lille, the metropolis estimates that “providing in all districts the levels of vegetation observed in the greenest districts of the metropolis would make it possible to avoid nearly 360 deaths each year”. In Montpellier, increasing the vegetation index would save 115 lives per year, particularly “in moderately dense and very dense urban areas”.
For air quality, it would be enough to take measures to avoid exceeding the maximum pollution level of fine particles recommended by the WHO, i.e. 10 μg/m3, to observe spectacular results. In Rouen, by lowering levels from 13.1 μg/m3 to 10 μg/m3, “we could avoid 65 deaths per year and 180 new cases of asthma in children”. For Lille, the challenge is greater since the current level of fine particles would have to be halved to “avoid nearly 200 deaths per year and 220 new cases of asthma in children”.
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As for the fight against transport noise, if the benefits are not counted in lives saved, the impact on health is still not negligible. And always by only complying with the recommendations of the WHO which recommends not exceeding 44 decibels at night and 53 during the day. In Montpellier, this could “avoid 40 hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases each year and improve the sleep of more than 2,700 people”. In Rouen, there would be 22 fewer hospitalizations and 1,300 people who would sleep better. This is even more true in Lille with “85 hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases” avoided per year and “more than 11,600 people” who would see their sleep improve.
