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Call key data

The role of environmental pollution in non-communicable diseases: air, noise and light and hazardous waste pollution

Funding Program

Horizon Europe - Cluster 1 - Destination 2: Living and working in a health-promoting environment

Call number

HORIZON-HLTH-2024-ENVHLTH-02-06

deadlines

Opening
30.03.2023

Deadline
19.09.2023 17:00

Funding rate

100%

Call budget

€ 60,000,000.00

Estimated EU contribution per project

between € 7,000,000.00 and € 8,000,000.00

Link to the call

ec.europa.eu

Link to the submission

ec.europa.eu

Call content

short description

This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination 2 ‘Living and working in a health-promoting environment’.

Call objectives

The European Green Deal set out by the European Commission recognises that man-made environmental pollution is an increasing threat for human health and wellbeing. Opinion polls show that climate change, air pollution, and waste are the three most important environmental issues that European citizens are concerned about. Over three-quarters (78%) of respondents believe that environmental issues have a direct effect on their daily life and health.

Pollution affects a large number of people in Europe and beyond: A 2018 assessment attributed 16% of total global mortality to pollution-related disease. Over 7 million people die of exposure to polluted air every year worldwide. For 2019, the European Environment Agency has estimated that around 350 000 premature deaths in the EU can be attributed to air pollution (namely from particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone). Today, more than 1 in 4 Europeans is exposed to traffic noise levels dangerous to their health in their homes, schools and workplaces. The increase of artificial light at night (ALAN) in cities has altered the natural light levels in the environment and extended human activities to the usually dark hours. It has been estimated that more than 80% of the world population is living under light polluted skies. Waste continues to be a persistent environmental issue in Europe, and it is estimated that there are 2.5 million contaminated sites in Europe, with potentially significant adverse health effects.

The global burden from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has consistently increased over the last decades, being now estimated to account for 70% of deaths globally (World Health Organization). The growing burden of chronic diseases will also be a challenge for Europe’s healthcare systems, these diseases already accounting for an estimated 70-80% of healthcare costs. Currently, around 50 million European citizens suffer from two or more chronic conditions and most of these people are over 65. The most recent WHO environmental burden of disease estimations suggest that, annually, 13% of deaths (630 000) in the WHO Europe region are attributable to environmental stressors and an EEA report concluded that, 90% of deaths attributable to the environment result from non-communicable diseases, including cancers, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mental, behavioural and neurological disorders, diabetes, kidney disease and asthma. While early childhood deaths have declined, the years lived with disability have increased, particularly with chronic disease.

The proposed research should strengthen the knowledge base available to policymakers regarding pollution-disease associations and causal mechanisms at different phases of the life course, taking advantage of latest molecular, cellular and computational technologies to elucidate biological pathways from exposure (including combined exposures) to disease. The work should bring together toxicology, exposure science, public health engineering and environmental epidemiology, and build on data from sources such as pollution-related databases, disease registries, epidemiological studies and biobanks, environmental and human biomonitoring data and new generated data and could consider citizen science and other innovative approaches. All exposure routes should be considered where relevant (oral/digestive tract, inhalation, dermal).

The focus of this topic should be on three areas where the understanding of and evidence on causality should be strengthened to overcome the current paucity of data and respond to calls from policymakers. The applicants should focus on at least one of the following three aspects:

  • Air pollution, especially in the urban environment, taking into account existing evidence, notably the latest WHO air quality guidelines of 2021 and their recommendations on different pollutants, including on pollutants of emerging concern, looking at e.g. ultrafine particles and interactions with aeroallergens, black carbon, sand and dust storms and impact on human health;
  • Noise pollution and light pollution impact on human health;
  • Pollution from hazardous waste (e.g. pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, e-waste, plastics (including nano- and microplastics)) in heavily contaminated environments and adverse health outcomes.

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Expected effects and impacts

Proposals under this topic should aim for delivering results that are tailored towards and contributing to all of the following expected outcomes:

  • National and EU authorities apply user-friendly tools to produce and use generated data on the impact of pollutants on health;
  • National and EU authorities benefit from access to robust and transparent indicators for health impact assessment to monitor efficacy of pollution-mitigating actions and policies;
  • Policymakers and other stakeholders, e.g. public authorities such as urban planners, health professionals, employers, civil society organisations and citizens, use developed guidelines to take action to prevent pollution-related illnesses and impairments, and choose healthier lifestyles and behaviours;
  • EU, national and regional authorities receive guidance and recommendations for updates of (1) scientific evidence about health risks caused by environmental pollutants (2) advice on management and mitigation of these health risks and (3) guidance and recommendations for updates of limit values for different classes of pollutants in the environment; these recommendations should take into account vulnerable population groups and people with increased vulnerability because of pre-existing medical conditions;
  • The implementation of the Zero-Pollution Action Plan, the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability and the EU legislation on air quality, noise and waste continue to be supported by a strong evidence-base;
  • Relevant actors in our daily lives, e.g. medical personnel, building engineers, teachers, urban planners etc., have access to information such as training courses on pollution and health impacts.

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Expected results

  • Research activities to strengthen the evidence base for pollution-disease associations and underlying causality mechanisms and biological pathways, taking into account combined exposures and mechanisms of increased sensitivity in susceptible groups;
  • Delivery of FAIR data on causal associations between environmental risk factors and health outcomes, in particular for air pollutants of emerging concern, specifically ultrafine particles, black carbon, and others, taking into account vulnerable population groups and specific exposure situations in a life-course approach including vulnerable early-stages of life and transgenerational risks;
  • Development of user-friendly tools for systematic mining and assessment of the knowledge generated and translation into best practices and to improve the assessment of individual life-exposure to pollutants;
  • Proposals for environmental limit values for the studied pollutants and generation of health impact indicators, where relevant and taking into account existing standards and evidence;
  • Development of guidelines and socio-economic and decision support tools for different actors including policymakers, health professionals and citizens to take action to prevent pollution-related illnesses and impairments, and to enable the choice of healthier lifestyles and behaviours;
  • Identification of cross-sectoral interventions (case studies) with the potential for remediating pollution and risk of exposure and improving human health and well-being in the short/medium term;
  • Development of training courses on pollution and health impacts to inform professionals impacting our daily lives e.g. medical personnel, engineers, teachers, urban planners;
  • Design of best-practice evidence-based communication actions for fact-based risk and benefit communication and improving citizen awareness of pollution and preventive actions, offsetting dissemination of misinformation;
  • Undertaking case studies to demonstrate the added societal value of tools, methodologies and guidelines developed and the implementation of resulting actions to decrease health impacts of exposures.

Aspects such as gender, regional variations, socioeconomics and culture should be considered, where appropriate. Proposals should ensure that chemical monitoring data are shared in IPCHEM through involvement with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). In that respect, the JRC will collaborate with any successful proposal and this collaboration, when relevant, should be established after the proposal’s approval.

This topic requires the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

In order to optimise synergies and increase the impact of the projects, all projects selected for funding from this topic will form a cluster and be required to participate in common networking and joint activities. Without the prerequisite to detail concrete joint activities, proposals should allocate a sufficient budget for the attendance to regular joint meetings and to cover the costs of any other potential common networking and joint activities.

Applicants invited to the second stage and envisaging to include clinical studies should provide details of their clinical studies in the dedicated annex using the template provided in the submission system. See definition of clinical studies in the introduction to this work programme part.

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Eligibility Criteria

Regions / countries for funding

EU Member States, Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT)
Moldova (Moldova), Albania (Shqipëria), Armenia (Հայաստան), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Faeroes (Føroyar / Færøerne), Georgia (საქართველო), Iceland (Ísland), Israel (ישראל / إِسْرَائِيل), Kosovo (Kosova/Kosovë / Косово), Montenegro (Црна Гора), Morocco (المغرب), North Macedonia (Северна Македонија), Norway (Norge), Serbia (Srbija/Сpбија), Tunisia (تونس /Tūnis), Türkiye, Ukraine (Україна), United Kingdom

eligible entities

EU Body, Education and training institution, International organization, Natural Person, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Mandatory partnership

Yes

Project Partnership

To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:

  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States
  • third countries associated to Horizon Europe - see list of particpating countries

Applications may be submitted by one or more legal entities, which may be established in a Member State, Associated Country or, in exceptional cases and if provided for in the specific call conditions, in another third country. 

In recognition of the opening of the US National Institutes of Health’s programmes to European researchers, any legal entity established in the United States of America is eligible to receive Union funding.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) may participate as member of the consortium selected for funding.

Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.

A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.

Specific cases:

  • Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions.
  • Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
  • Joint Research Centre (‘JRC’)— Where provided for in the specific call conditions, applicants may include in their proposals the possible contribution of the JRC but the JRC will not participate in the preparation and submission of the proposal. Applicants will indicate the contribution that the JRC could bring to the project based on the scope of the topic text. After the evaluation process, the JRC and the consortium selected for funding may come to an agreement on the specific terms of the participation of the JRC. If an agreement is found, the JRC may accede to the grant agreement as beneficiary requesting zero funding or participate as an associated partner, and would accede to the consortium as a member.
  • Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members (e.g. European research infrastructure consortia (ERICs)) may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. However, if the action is in practice implemented by the individual members, those members should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible.

other eligibility criteria

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

Additional information

Topics

Air Quality, Biodiversity & Environment, Climate & Climate Change, Water quality & management, 
Health, Social Services, Sports

Relevance for EU Macro-Region

EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region

UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)

Additional Information

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funders & Tenders Portal electronic submission system (accessible via the topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.

Proposals must be complete and contain all parts and mandatory annexes and supporting documents, e.g. plan for the exploitation and dissemination of the results including communication activities, etc.

The application form will have two parts:

  • Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;
  • Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project.

Annexes and supporting documents will be directly available in the submission system and must be uploaded as PDF files (or other formats allowed by the system).

This call follows a two-stage approach.

This topic is part of the blind evaluation pilot under which first stage proposals will be evaluated blindly. Applicants submitting a proposal under the blind evaluation pilot must not disclose their organisation names, acronyms, logos nor names of personnel in Part B of their first-stage application.

The limit for a first-stage application is 10 pages. The limit for a full application (Part B) is 50 pages.

The award criteria are described in General Annex D. The following exceptions apply:
For the second stage, the thresholds for each criterion will be 4 (Excellence), 4 (Impact) and 3 (Implementation). The cumulative threshold will be 12.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum.

In order to optimise synergies and increase the impact of the projects, all projects selected for funding from this topic will form a cluster and be required to participate in common networking and joint activities.

Call documents

HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 1, Destination 2HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 1, Destination 2(383kB)

Contact

National Contact Points for Horizon Europe
Website

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