The Paris prosecutor’s office has just opened a preliminary investigation for “endangering others” and “deception on a service provision entailing a danger to human health”, learned The world from judicial sources. It follows the complaint filed in March 2021 by the Respire association against the Autonomous Paris Transport Authority (RATP) for aggravated deception and willful injury. The organization criticizes the Parisian public transport authority for not properly informing its millions of users of the levels of air pollution to which they are exposed when they take the metro or the RER.
The survey has was entrusted to the public health unit of the Paris court. According to our information, the Central Office for combating damage to the environment and public health (Oclaesp) was seized in February to carry out the investigations. When contacted, the RATP indicated that it “does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings” but that “air quality has been a priority for twenty years”.
“It is time to lift the law of silence and for the RATP to tell the truth to users”, comments Tony Renucci, the director of Respire. The NGO has been warning for several years about levels of air pollution “worrying” in the enclosures of the metro and the RER and on ” misleading figures » communicated by the RATP to its users.
Several measurement campaigns have shown levels of fine particles much higher than those recorded in the outside air. These particles, which are particularly dangerous for health because they penetrate deeply into the body, are emitted mainly by the braking system of trains. A study carried out at the end of 2020 in collaboration with a CNRS researcher had noted peaks of up to 500 micrograms per cubic meter at the Auber RER station, ten times more than the alert threshold for a pollution peak.
Air three times more polluted than outside
With the Châtelet (metro line 4) and Franklin-Roosevelt (line 1) stops, Auber is one of three stations “representative” where the RATP has installed sensors to monitor air pollution in its network. With the exception of the Franklin-Roosevelt station, where the data is “about right”according to Respire, the values recorded by the association show differences “meaningful” with those of the RATP. This is why the NGO accuses him of “hide the seriousness of the situation from the public”.
“The RATP is aware of the situation since it takes its own measures and has been made aware of this point by the health authorities since the beginning of the 2000s.recalls Tony Renucci. However, it deliberately refrains from alerting the users of its network to the risks they run. » The NGO is not the only one to have lodged a complaint against the RATP. In May 2021, around twenty users as well as the SAT-RATP employee union took legal action.
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