Particulate matter also raises risk on the day of exposure, with PM2.5 tied to a 3% increase and PM10 to about 2.5%.

Urban areas show stronger associations, but rural towns are affected too, with effects most pronounced during warmer months, hinting at heat-pollution interactions.

Associations appear even below current legal pollutant limits, suggesting there may be no safe exposure threshold for this outcome.

The authors frame air quality as a short-term cardiovascular risk factor and urge integrating environmental data into health forecasting and emergency response.

Project partners include the German Aerospace Center and the Group on Earth Observation, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization.

Policy implications point toward prevention and management during high-pollution periods, with ties to the CLIMA-CARE project using satellite data to analyze environmental impacts on health and emergency services in Lombardy.

Lead author Amruta Umakant Mahakalkar and colleagues advocate preventive adaptation and a One-Health approach to address climate-related health risks at the population level.

The study integrates satellite data and earth observation to relate air quality to cardiac risk, providing a framework for health agencies and policymakers.

Overall, the findings emphasize immediate cardiovascular risk from air pollution and the need to operationalize environmental data in health planning for Lombardy.

A Politecnico di Milano study of 37,613 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Lombardy from 2016 to 2019 links daily air pollutant levels to cardiac risk.

Researchers used Copernicus satellite data to measure NO2, PM2.5, PM10, O3, and CO and applied spatio-temporal models to identify associations with cardiac events.

The analysis shows NO2 has a strong link to risk, with a 10 μg/m³ rise associated with a 7% increase in cardiac arrest risk over the next 96 hours.