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Air quality in Europe continues to remain poor in many areas, with regulation limits often exceeded by many countries. The EU Life-IP PREPAIR Project, involving administrations and environmental protection agencies of eight regions and three municipalities in Northern Italy and Slovenia, was designed to support the implementation of the regional air quality plans in the Po Valley, one of the most critical areas in Europe in terms of pollution levels. In this study, four air quality modelling systems, based on three chemical transport models (CHIMERE, FARM and CAMx) were applied over the Po Valley to assess the sensitivity of PM2.5 concentrations to NOx and NH3 emission reductions. These two precursors were reduced (individually and simultaneously) from 25% up to 75% for a total of 10 scenarios, aimed at identifying the most efficient emission reduction strategies and to assess the non-linear response of PM2.5 concentrations to precursor changes. The multi-model analysis shows that reductions across multiple emission sectors are necessary to achieve optimal results. In addition, the analysis of non-linearities revealed that during the cold season, the efficiency of PM2.5 abatement tends to increase by increasing the emission reductions, while during summertime, the same efficiency remains almost constant, or slightly decreases towards higher reduction strengths. Since the concentrations of PM2.5 are greater in winter than in summer, it is reasonable to infer that significant emission reductions should be planned to maximise reduction effectiveness.

The aim of MED HISS methodology was to test the effectiveness of a low-cost approach to study long-term effects of air pollution, applicable in all European countries. This approach is potentially exportable to other environmental issues where a cohort representative of the country population is needed.The cohort is derived from the National Health Interview Survey, compulsory in European countries, which has information on individual lifestyle factors. In Life Med Hiss approach, subjects recruited have been linked at individual level with health data and have been then followed-up for mortality and hospital admissions outcomes. Exposure values of air pollution (PM2.5 and NO2) have been assigned using national dispersion models, enhanced by the information derived from monitoring station with data fusion techniques, and then upscaled at municipality level (highest level of detail achievable for the Italian Survey). Results for mortality have been used to test the effectiveness of this methodology and are encouraging if compared with European ones.The advantages of this technique are summarized below: • It uses a cohort already available and compulsory in European countries • It uses air quality modelling data, available for most of the countries • It permits to implement versatile environmental surveillance systems Method name: LIFE Med Hiss project approach, Keywords: Air pollution, Epidemiological surveillance, Long term studies, National Health Interview Surveys, Exposure assessment