At the Clean Air Forum in Paris on Thursday 16 November, the European Commission and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) launched a new index that allows European citizens to monitor air quality in real time.
The new index has an interactive map on the EEA website. It provides information on the current air quality situation based on measurements from more than 2,000 air quality monitoring stations across Europe. It measures five key pollutants: particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), ground-level ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2).
By zooming in on a town or a region, users can check the local air quality situation, illustrated by means of a colour code, ranging from green when air quality is “good” to dark red when it is “very poor”. At the time of writing this article, air quality in Brussels, for example, was shown on the map as being fair with regard to PM2.5. Stations which have yet to provide data, largely in Italy and Greece, are shown in grey.
“Air pollution is an invisible killer, so the Air Quality Index is needed to inform European citizens on the state of the air they breathe in their own neighbourhood”, said European Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella a press release.
On the same day, the Commission also published an Air Quality Atlas, which has been developed by its Joint Research Centre and maps of the sources of fine particles, such as dust, smoke, soot, pollen and soil particles. According to this document, the main sources of air pollution our human activities, with transport, farming, industry and residential heating the biggest culprits.
Each year, over 400,000 citizens die prematurely in the EU as a result of poor air quality, more than ten times the number of deaths by road traffic accidents, the Commission points out. The new index is available at: http://bit.ly/2hBCHPW (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)