No abstract

The attention of policy makers on aviation environmental impacts has increased meaningfully over the last years. In order to limit the sector's CO 2 emissions, the EU has broadened the aviation industry part of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), from 1 st January 2012 with the Directive 101/2008/EC. The aim of this paper is to provide an estimation of the direct costs linked to EU-ETS that the aviation sector is standing, reporting the case of Italy. In details, this work proposes a calculation of the EU-ETS direct costs that Italian airline companies, under the scheme, afforded over the period 2012-2014. Then, it presents a forecast of the EU-ETS direct costs for the years 2015-2016, referring to three scenarios related to different hypotheses on emission permit price (low, medium, high bounded scenarios), and on pass-through of those costs onto final passengers. Finally, the paper measures the effects of those costs in terms of change in airfares, revenues, and social costs. The calculations are obtained by following an economic model designed by the authors, which can also be extended to investigate other sectors covered by the EU-ETS.

Even if the epidemic of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is still far from being over worldwide, the health effects of regulations banning asbestos can be evaluated in the countries that implemented them early. Estimates of MPM future burden can be useful to inform and support the implementation of anti-asbestos health policies all around the world. With this aim we described the trends of MPM deaths in Italy (1970–2014) and predicted the future number of cases in both sexes (2015–2039), with consideration of the national asbestos ban that was issued in 1992. The Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) provided MPM mortality figures. Cases ranging from 25 to 89 years of age were included in the analysis. For each five-year period from 1970 to 2014, mortality rates were calculated and age–period–cohort Poisson models were used to predict future burden of MPM cases until 2039. During the period 1970–2014 a total number of 28,907 MPM deaths were observed. MPM deaths increased constantly over the study period, ranging from 1356 cases in 1970–1974 to 5844 cases in 2010–2014. The peak of MPM cases is expected to be reached in the period 2020–2024 (about 7000 cases). The decrease will be slow: about 26,000 MPM cases are expected to occur in Italy during the next 20 years (2020–2039). The MPM epidemic in Italy is far from being concluded despite the national ban implemented in 1992, and the peak is expected in 2020–2024, in both sexes. Our results are consistent with international literature.

Statistical models used to forecast malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) trends often do not take into account historical asbestos consumption, possibly resulting in less accurate predictions of the future MPM death toll. We used the distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) approach to predict future MPM cases in Italy until 2040, based on past asbestos consumption figures. Analyses were conducted using data on male MPM deaths (1970–2014) and annual asbestos consumption using data on domestic production, importation, and exportation. According to our model, the peak of MPM deaths is expected to occur in 2021 (1122 expected cases), with a subsequent decrease in mortality (344 MPM deaths in 2039). The exposure–response curve shows that relative risk (RR) of MPM increased almost linearly for lower levels of exposure but flattened at higher levels. The lag-specific RR grew until 30 years since exposure and decreased thereafter, suggesting that the most relevant contributions to the risk come from exposures which occurred 20–40 years before death. Our results show that the Italian MPM epidemic is approaching its peak and underline that the association between temporal trends of MPM and time since exposure to asbestos is not monotonic, suggesting a lesser role of remote exposures in the development of MPM than previously assumed.