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The EU, seeking to be a global leader in the fight against climate change, is moving ahead with ambitious policies to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions. In this context, the Fit for 55 package (FF55) is a set of proposals to revise and update EU legislation, to ensure that policies are in line with the climate goals of cutting emissions by at least 55% by 2030. Whilst these policies are designed for climate purposes, they will have positive side-effects (co-benefits) on air quality. Separately, additional policies are also in place to reduce emissions of related air pollutants and to improve air quality concentrations on EU territory. In this work, through a modelling study, we analyse the benefits of these policies via the health benefits arising from the resulting reductions in yearly average PM2.5 concentrations. Results are analysed by assessing and comparing morbidity and mortality impacts as computed using both the HRAPIE (Health risks of air pollution in Europe, WHO, as implemented in the CaRBonH model) and the GBD (Global Burden of Disease, as implemented in FASST-GBD model) approaches. Even when considering the uncertainty and variability in the results obtained using the two approaches, it is clear that EU policies can bring health and economic benefit in EU, with several Billions of Euro of benefits both in terms of morbidity and mortality indicators., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Information on the origin of pollution constitutes an essential step of air quality management as it helps identifying measures to control air pollution. In this work, we review the most widely used source-apportionment methods for air quality management. Using theoretical and real-case datasets we study the differences among these methods and explain why they result in very different conclusions to support air quality planning. These differences are a consequence of the intrinsic assumptions that underpin the different methodologies and determine/limit their range of applicability. We show that ignoring their underlying assumptions is a risk for efficient/successful air quality management as these methods are sometimes used beyond their scope and range of applicability. The simplest approach based on increments (incremental approach) is often not suitable to support air quality planning. Contributions obtained through mass-transfer methods (receptor models or tagging approaches built in air quality models) are appropriate to support planning but only for specific pollutants. Impacts obtained via "brute-force" methods are the best suited but it is important to assess carefully their application range to make sure they reproduce correctly the prevailing chemical regimes., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

In the middle of Europe, the Alps form a geographical and meteorological trap for atmospheric pollutants including volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds emitted in the surrounding lowlands. This is due to their barrier effects, high precipitation rates, and low ambient temperatures. Also the pollutants emitted in the cities inside the Alps spread in the region depending on orographic and meteorological conditions. Although a number of studies on the distribution and effect of pollutants in the Alps has been published, comprehensive information on potential hazards, and ways to improve this sensible environment are lacking. This opinion paper is the result of a discussion during the Winterseminar of the AlpsBioCluster project in Munich. It summarizes the current literature and presents some case studies on local pollution sources in the Alps, and the possibility of using biomonitoring techniques to assess critical pollution loads and distributions.