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Nov 25, 2011

Where's the worst air pollution in Europe and how much does it cost us? | News | guardian.co.uk

Today the European Energy Agency (EEA) revealed its costing of airpollution in Europe. These are the costs of illness and environmental damage caused by pollutants from industrial facilities.

The report's key finding is that a tiny number of industrial sites are causing a large proportion of the damage. In fact just 6% of the total number of industrial sites in Europe are responsible for three quarters of the total damage costs.

As such the data from the report describes the 622 facilities that cause three quarters of the total damage costs.

But what are the costs?

The report finds that air pollution from the 10,000 largest polluting facilities in Europe cost citizens between €102bn and €169bn in 2009.

The costs of the 622 facilites are showin in this diagram:

Branding-bottom
The full sized image is on the Many Eyes website.

These figures are in millions of euros, and the costs come from something called the 'value of statistical life', or VSL for short, measure of health.

A model was used to come up with these figures. The basis for the model come from the ExternE Project.