Clean air for all or will the poor have to wait?

A group of health scientists has recently published a scientific commentary which shows the significant consequences that postponing deadlines to achieve new EU air quality objectives would have for Europeans’ health.

The European Commission’s 2021 Zero Pollution Action Plan committed to revising the outdated EU Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD), a legal instrument crucial for regulating air pollution across EU member states. Current EU limits for pollutants such as particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) differ significantly from the 2021 WHO guidelines, emphasising the need for EU law to align with scientific evidence. The revised AAQD, as proposed by the European Commission in October 2022, falls short of WHO recommendations – with air quality limit values for PM2.5 and NO2 that are twice the level of the WHO guidelines to be achieved by 2030. In September 2023, the European Parliament voted for WHO guideline alignment by 2035, but the Council has since endorsed the Commission’s original proposal, and included mechanisms to delay compliance until 2040. The mechanisms that enable member states to delay compliance can be called on for a wide range of reasons, including having a lower GDP than the EU average – this will therefore result in the most economically vulnerable people breathing worse quality air.

According to one of the authors of the commentary, Professor Zorana Jovanovic Andersen at the University of Copenhagen:
“Allowing additional delays in reaching new EU air quality standards, differentiated based on GDP, are completely unacceptable to ERS community, as they would widen existing inequalities in air pollution levels and health burden between East and West. Children and adults in Eastern European countries have already been breathing the most polluted air in Europe, and suffering from related lung diseases, for far too long. We need fair and ambitious new EU air quality legislation, that values the health of all Europeans equally. New Air Quality Directive must provide clear vision and support to speed up, and not delay, much needed air pollution reductions in Eastern Europe, in order to improve health and wellbeing, and achieve clean air for all in Europe, as soon as possible.”

Trilogue discussions among the Council, Parliament and Commission will be concluded by the time you read your copy of Acid News, and we hope the compromised text does not allow for such delays, which have devastating impact.

Professor Barbara Hoffmann at the University of Düsseldorf and one of the authors of the article says:
“Every year of delay of reaching limit values directly translates into more deaths and disease. For Italy and Poland alone, 120,000 and 90,000 additional deaths will result from delaying compliance with the suggested limit values from 2030 to 2040. For the 15 member states with the lowest GDP in Europe, about 330,000 additional deaths will be caused by this delay. It is highly unfair to put this huge burden on societies that are already struggling. We urgently need to reduce air pollution.”

Ebba Malmqvist
Int J Public Health, 01 February 2024, https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2024.1606958