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Italy Health Impact

Translate PM2.5 exposure into WHO exceedance and a simple cigarette-equivalent indicator. This pilot covers 80 eligible cities with OpenAQ-derived daily AQI history.

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Italy health-impact overview

Cigs / day avg
0.8
Berkeley Earth heuristic
Life-years lost / person
1.3
EPIC AQLI coefficient
Cities above WHO annual AQG
100%
annual mean > 5 ug/m3
Cities measured
80
of 132 OpenAQ cities

Same PM2.5. Three standards. Three verdicts.

PM2.5 5 ug/m3
US EPA AQI28
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.2
AQLI0.0 y
PM2.5 10 ug/m3
US EPA AQI53
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.5
AQLI0.5 y
PM2.5 15 ug/m3
US EPA AQI62
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.7
AQLI1.0 y
PM2.5 25 ug/m3
US EPA AQI81
WHO tierIT-4
Cigs/day1.1
AQLI2.0 y

Top 20 cities by cigarette-equivalent exposure

Using Berkeley Earth's 22 ug/m3 = 1 cigarette/day heuristic. Cigarette equivalence is a communication tool, not a clinical diagnosis.

#CityPM2.5Cigs/dayLife-yrs lostAvg AQI
1San Pietro VernoticoPuglia98.2 ug/m34.59.1 y112
2Ceglie MessapicoPuglia77.6 ug/m33.57.1 y96
3CasalmaggioreLombardy54.5 ug/m32.54.9 y138
4Castano PrimoLombardy29.2 ug/m31.32.4 y69
5SoresinaLombardy28.4 ug/m31.32.3 y65
6MonzaLombardy27.6 ug/m31.32.2 y54
7La LoggiaPiedmont24.3 ug/m31.11.9 y76
8BorgosatolloLombardy23.5 ug/m31.11.8 y73
9Sesto San GiovanniLombardy23.0 ug/m31.01.8 y74
10DalmineLombardy22.7 ug/m31.01.7 y44
11PaviaLombardy22.5 ug/m31.01.7 y44
12SaronnoLombardy22.3 ug/m31.01.7 y72
13AlessandriaPiedmont22.1 ug/m31.01.7 y73
14CremonaLombardy21.8 ug/m31.01.6 y71
15CittanovaCalabria21.7 ug/m31.01.6 y70
16MilanLombardy21.3 ug/m31.01.6 y70
17MirandolaEmilia-Romagna21.1 ug/m31.01.6 y72
18MerateLombardy21.0 ug/m31.01.6 y71
19TreviglioLombardy20.3 ug/m30.91.5 y70
20PorcariTuscany20.2 ug/m30.91.5 y70

Methodology & sources

This page starts with OpenAQ PM2.5 and PM10 measurements mapped to AQI Now cities, then rolls daily city observations into city-level PM2.5 averages and US EPA AQI summaries. Health equivalents are screening indicators: useful for comparing exposure, not a clinical diagnosis.

Cigarette equivalence
22 ug/m3 = 1 cig/day

Muller & Muller, Berkeley Earth (2015), derived from Pope et al. 2002 and cigarette risk factors.

Life-years lost
0.098 y per ug/m3

EPIC Air Quality Life Index coefficient above the WHO annual PM2.5 baseline of 5 ug/m3.

WHO 2021 PM2.5
15 ug/m3 24-hr AQG

WHO tiers shown here use AQG 15, IT-4 25, IT-3 37.5, IT-2 50, IT-1 75 ug/m3.

Methodology

The extractor maps OpenAQ monitoring locations to the nearest AQI Now city in the same country, aggregates PM2.5 and PM10 to daily city averages, and converts those concentrations to US EPA AQI. Country tool pages use only city summaries that satisfy the configured minimum daily coverage threshold.

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