Congresso RespiraMI Milano 2019

Ambient air pollution is one of the most important global risk factors for morbidity, disability and mortality. Because this risk affects a huge number of urban areas in high income as well as in low income countries, the healthcare dimensions of its consequences are huge, as one realizes considering that there are at least 7 million premature deaths due to air pollution, according to WHO and the Global Burden of Disease epidemiological studies. Living in one of the most polluted area of the world (the Po River Plain), together with the distinguished epidemiologists of the Regione Lazio (led by Francesco Forastiere) and a former staff member of WHO (Michal Krzyzanowski), we first chose in 2015 to organize an independent international seminar called RespiraMi, with the goal to gather the most distinguished global experts and ask them to present their most recent and mostly unpublished data on the progress of science towards tackling the global problem of outdoor and indoor air pollution, in the frame of a two day seminar. The third 2019 edition of the Seminar (RespiraMi 3) enlists a distinguish team of expert speakers from the 4 world continents who will put special emphasis on the effects of air pollution on the weakest groups of citizens: the child, the pregnant woman, older people, to poorest people, as well as on the growing evidence that air pollution is a cause of most common, growing and devastating neurodegenerative disease (dementia, Alzheimer). The Seminar will newly deal also on the arrays of measures that are being enforced in highly polluted countries such as China, Poland and also Italy to mitigate the deleterious effects of outdoor and indoor air pollutants. Finally, special emphasis will be given to recent data that convincingly show that living, working and going to school in areas richer in greenness decrease overall mortality (particularly from cancer and cardiopulmonary diseases) but also allows school children to achieve better learning performances than those who live and go to school in areas deprived of greenness.

Chairs of the Seminar
P.M. Mannucci - S. Harari - F. Forastiere - M. Krzyzanowski