Are Current EU Air Quality Standards Protecting Our Health?

Abstract information

In this video, JULIA MINK examines whether air pollution still harms health in countries where pollution levels are considered safe by EU standards. Focusing on France, she uses administrative health data and atmospheric variation to identify causal effects of fine particulate matter. Her findings show that even moderate pollution significantly increases healthcare spending across all age groups, raising important questions about current air quality thresholds and public health policy.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101230

Researcher

Julia Mink is Argelander Professor of Environmental Economics, Sustainability and Inequality (Tenure Track Assistant Professor) at the University of Bonn. She is an empirical economist specialising in quasi-experimental methods and large spatio-temporal administrative and survey data. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental and health economics, with a focus on quantifying the societal costs of pollution and climate change and their unequal distribution across populations. Mink earned her PhD in Economics from Sciences Po and previously held a postdoctoral position at INRAE.

Institution information

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Bonn is one of the large universities in Germany, with around 36,000 students, 550 professors, 6,500 other staff staff. It offers a wide disciplinary spectrum comprising some 200 different degree programmes, from Agricultural Science to Tibetan Studies. This diversity is what characterizes Bonn as a full-range university with a strong international orientation. In many international university rankings Bonn is placed among the 100 best universities in the world.Its academic and research profile features internationally renowned specializations in the fields of Mathematics, Physics/Astronomy, Economics, Chemistry, Pharma Research, Biosciences, Genetic Medicine, Neurosciences and Philosophy/Ethics. Other disciplines, such as Geography and Law, are of outstanding importance within the German research scene. The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn is rooted in a long tradition going back almost 200 years. It was founded in 1818 by Friedrich-Wilhelm III, the Prussian king whose name it bears. Imbued with the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt, the university quickly joined the circle of Germany’s most distinguished universities and became a major pole of attraction for leading scholars as well as students.The list of famous professors ranges from the astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander (1799-1875), through the chemist August Kekulé von Stradonitz (1829–1896) and political economist Josef Schumpeter (1883–1950) to the philologist Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956) and the theologists Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Joseph Ratzinger (born 1927), now Pope Benedict XVI. Bonn’s best-known students include Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Konrad Adenauer. The university is proud of a long list of award-winning scientists and scholars, with about twenty Leibniz Prize winners and around thirty ERC grantees. In the last three decades two professors have received the Nobel Prize: Wolfgang Paul (for Physics, 1989) and Reinhard Selten (for Economics, 1994). (Source: University of Bonn)
University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Original Publication

The healthcare costs of air pollution in France

Citation

Julia Mink, 

Latest Thinking, 

Are Current EU Air Quality Standards Protecting Our Health?, 

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101230, 

Credits:

© Julia Mink

and Latest Thinking

This work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0