Pollution in the Arve Valley: State ordered to compensate a family

The Lyon administrative court of appeal, in a decision dated Wednesday seen by AFP, ordered the State to pay the family a total of 9.000 euros. It considers that the respiratory pathologies of the son, born in 2012, "were aggravated by pollution, in particular during pollution peaks".

The State committed a "fault" due to "the inadequacy of the measures adopted to ensure that the periods during which the limit values ​​for the concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere of the Arve Valley were exceeded were as short as possible", according to the judgment.

"This decision, by recognizing the causal link between the State's fault and the harm suffered by the child victim of air pollution in the Arve Valley, is exemplary," responded Me François Lafforgue, counsel for the family.

"We have done work to establish the concomitance between pollution peaks and times of worsening of the child's health," he explained.

According to him, this is the first time that such a causal link has been recognised in the Arve Valley.

Sandwiched between two massifs, the valley suffers from a "basin" effect which encourages the accumulation of pollutants in the air: "non-efficient" wood heating such as with old appliances and open fireplaces, road transport with exhaust gases, wear of tires and brakes, discharges from industrial and agricultural activities...

In June 2023, the State was ordered, for the first time, to compensate victims of air pollution by a court, which ruled that two children suffering from bronchiolitis and repeated ear infections had been made ill due, among other things, to exceeding pollution thresholds in the Paris region.