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Paris Can't Breathe: Worst Pollution In A Decade Has City Gasping For Solutions

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Poor Paris. It doesn’t seem to get a break. With its main symbol, the Eiffel Tower, barely visible through smog so thick that the authorities have declared a state of alert, the City of Light has gone through more than a week of the worst winter pollution in a decade.

Paris is already an increasingly polluted city, but the situation has reached the level of a health crisis as the season’s cold weather and windless conditions have trapped exhaust fumes, smoke from wood-burning chimneys and industrial pollutants.

“Living in Paris during this peak of pollution is equivalent to breathing the smoke of eight cigarettes a day in a room of 20 square meters,” explained “Stoppollution,” a campaign launched on the web and social networks by Paris’s City Hall to alert on the dangers.

City officials had taken extraordinary traffic control measures, including driving bans for private vehicles on alternate days according to their license plates. But the measure became ineffective as most drivers didn’t respect it. It was lifted during the weekend.

The city also offered free public transportation as well as the free use of the Vélib (the city’s shared bicycle service) and Autolib (the city’s shared electric car service).

Over the weekend, some improvement in the air quality was noted thanks to less traffic and some wind but AirParif, the agency monitoring the air in the capital region, warned that pollution levels may soar again this week due to continued pollution-trapping weather conditions. "The extreme anticyclonic conditions of the last days should not come back," Airparif said Saturday. “Nevertheless, we do not expect a rapid fall of pollutant particles. We will still have high concentrations.”

The peaks of pollution are "a problem taken seriously by the government," said the Environment Minister Ségolène Royal after a cabinet meeting on Saturday to discuss the situation. Among the measures agreed during the meeting is the extension of a “super bonus” of €10,000 to light trucks and taxis that want to replace a diesel for an electric vehicle.

France already offers a €10.000 euro incentive to private individuals for the purchase of electric cars and taxis. Starting January 1st, a bonus of €1,000 will also be granted to buyers of electric scooters.

Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo promised that “there will be no more diesel vehicles in Paris by 2020.”

Among the anti-pollution measures unveiled by the city government over the weekend is one to force motorists to display color-coded air-quality certificates tied to emissions levels on their vehicles to limit traffic during pollution alerts. The display sticker will become mandatory in the Paris region starting January 16.

According to the French Institute of Public Health, pollution in France causes thousands of premature deaths from cancer and respiratory illnesses. "We estimate that fine-particle pollution causes 48,000 premature deaths a year in France, or 9% of deaths overall," said Sylvia Medina, a doctor at the health agency.

Health Minister Marisol Touraine announced on Friday that hospitals were on alert for emergency respiratory problems across the Paris region and in southeastern France. Over 2,000 asthmatic children were treated in Parisian hospital emergency rooms.

Meanwhile, the government has also warned residents to limit outdoor activities.