Air pollution and social cost: a first estimate of potential savings from the urban application of nano-structured materials

Because nowadays more than 200 kind of diseases are to some extent connected to atmospheric pollution, with a very significant impact on the social cost of a community, it can be important to study the effect that plans for using technologies able to treat urban areas atmosphere as a whole (in particular public areas), may have on reducing social and economic costs. The relationship between the increment of air pollutant concentration and morbidity/mortality due to natural, heart, encephalovascular and respiratory causes has been widely documented in national and international scientific literature. A technology based on nano-structured materials (TiO2 based nanocompounds) which, under ultraviolet radiations, presents photocathalytic effects, can be able to decompose a wide variety of atmospheric pollutants as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nano-powder (PM10). In this paper we study and set up a model for the economic and social impact assessment of a large scale implementation of this technology in the field of urban and building construction. The paper assumes that the estimates of economic-social costs of air pollution, can be used as a starting point for a preliminary determination of the savings, which can be realized by employing photocatalytic pigments and mortars on a wide urban scale. This analysis has been applied to data referred to the town of Turin and has highlighted the possibility of a considerable level of saving in terms of social and economic costs.