“Environmental inequalities in Italy: The role of industrial agglomerations and regional pollution dispersion capacity”

This study investigates the relationship between PM2.5 concentration and per capita income at the municipality level for Italy, focusing on the years 2013 and 2019. It incorporates the influence of regional pollution dispersion capacity and agglomerations on this correlation, providing insight into environmental inequality across the country. While there is not an unconditional environmental inequality issue at the national level, controlling for specific ecoregions and structural factors reveals that the initially positive correlation between pollution and income weakens substantially, eventually disappearing. A key finding is that municipalities located in the Padana Valley ecoregion are systematically exposed to higher PM2.5 concentrations, signaling a persistent type of morphological environmental inequality. In this area, the excess of PM2.5 exposure increases mortality risk by 13.8 % in 2013 and 10.88 % in 2019 with respect to the WHO threshold. The most pronounced relative disparity in mortality risk between the most and least polluted ecoregions (namely, the Padana Valley and the Apennines) is 9.31 % in 2013 and 7.04 % in 2019. When analyzing variation within provinces, the per capita income level of municipalities emerges as a significant indicator. An increase of 10,000 euros in the average per capita income of the municipality corresponds to a decrease of 2.01 mg/m3 in PM2.5 annual average exposure level (−1.6 % in mortality risk) in 2013 and 1.05 mg/m3 (−0.7 % in mortality risk) in 2019.