The Numbers Nobody Counts
Italy has the highest air-pollution death toll in Europe. The political attention it receives is close to zero.
The European Environment Agency published its figures in December 2025: 43,083 premature deaths in Italy attributable to PM2.5 exposure in a single year. The highest absolute figure among all EU member states.
For context: that is more than all road traffic deaths, workplace fatalities, and homicides in Italy combined — by a wide margin.
In Modena, the monitoring station on Via Giardini records PM2.5 at an annual mean of 23.7 µg/m³. The EU limit is 25. The WHO guideline is 5. Modena is legally compliant and nearly five times over the safety threshold recommended by the world's leading health authority.
Here is what makes this invisible. PM10 — the coarser particle fraction — has been declining: from 42.1 µg/m³ in 2015 to 38.2 in 2024. Progress. At that rate of 0.4 µg/m³ per year, Modena will reach the WHO guideline of 15 µg/m³ in approximately 2082. Nearly sixty years away.
The cost is not hypothetical. Proportionally, Modena's share of Italy's air-pollution mortality is well over a hundred lives per year. But no line item in the municipal budget says "air pollution." The cost is distributed across hospital beds, prescriptions, sick days, and early retirements — buried in health spending that no one connects to the air outside the window.
COVID provided an accidental experiment. During lockdown, traffic in Italy dropped 60–82% according to Google Mobility Reports and ANAS motorway data. In Modena, PM10 fell from 38.2 to approximately 35.1 µg/m³ — less than a 10% drop. Traffic nearly disappeared, and the air barely changed.
Why? Because traffic is not the main source. According to PREPAIR project emission inventories and ARPAE source apportionment studies, heating accounts for roughly 39% of particulate matter in the Po Valley, traffic for 34%, and agriculture for 24%. During winter pollution episodes, secondary formation — chemical reactions in the atmosphere where ammonia from Parmigiano-Reggiano production combines with nitrogen oxides — can account for 50–70% of total PM mass.
The city debates traffic because traffic is visible. The air kills quietly, distributed across four source sectors and a chemistry set that no one voted for. DMAIC's second phase is Measure — and measurement means counting what matters, not what is easy to count.
The numbers exist. ARPAE collects them with 96.3% data capture. The gap is not knowledge. It is attention.
