Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
that people living in a particular area are faced with needs to be modified. This is
possible by taking into consideration the actual levels of pollution that exist inside
buildings, because Parisians spend more than 80% of their time inside offices when
they are not at home
23
. Preventing such pollution from taking place appears to be a
difficult task. It is not a question of moving those people who might be exposed to
pollution to another area, and who have not been identified as potentially being
affected by pollution. Neither is it a question of removing the heat exchanger. This
leads to the following difficult question: is it possible to have a local strategy that
can be used to improve pollution levels (for example, by focusing working on the
periphery of the city)? The corresponding map produced not only raises scientific
doubts, but it also begins to raise doubts regarding preventing pollution.
The same types of questions are also raised for those areas that surround
factories. For example, maps that show the concentration of benzene levels in the air
have led to the creation of a GIS at Drocourt, in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-
Calais. The measurements, which were taken several times by this GIS, have shown
that there is an abnormally high level of benzene present in the air. Two industries
that were suspected of emitting benzene were located in the areas under
investigation. Furthermore, tests carried out to see whether there were any health
risks associated with the emission of benzene showed that there was a clear increase
in the amount of benzene produced in the area. As a result, one of the factories
closed and benzene levels became significantly lower. The documents that were
produced and provided an analysis of the investigation showed that there were two
main problems: first, the only solution to improve sustainable development might
not have been to close down work places and thus increase unemployment, and
second, there was the issue of historical pollution. In what state is the health of
members of the public who spent a large part of their lives exposed to high levels of
pollution? Even if the factory has closed down, some members of the public have
nonetheless spent years of their lives exposed to such pollution. This pollution,
which has accumulated over time, still remains in their bodies.
Mapping pollution hotspots raises another problem: identifying the different
sources of pollution. This problem is made up of a different number of collective
processes which are associated with atmospheric pollution. This problem is also
linked to issues associated with scale effects which make the individual analysis of
different intervention levels difficult to carry out. Progress has been made in a
branch of modeling known as inverse modeling, and the progress made in this field
makes it easier to trace the source of a particular pollutant that has been emitted.
Nevertheless, expensive measures adopted to reduce pollution levels on a local
scale have not been very productive, which is disappointing. AIRPARIF examined
the policy on public transport introduced by Paris City Council, and found that
23 The influence that the characteristics of buildings has on interior pollution was highlighted
by the Institute of Health Monitoring (INVS) by studying the distribution of dead bodies that
were found as a result of the summer heat wave in 2003.
