Ten principles for clean air

The European “Year of the Air” 2013 will be upon us soon: over the next several months, the European Union (EU) will revise its main air pollution control policies. Lack of clean air is one of the most important environmental threats to public health in Europe today. The European Respiratory Society Environment and Health Committee (www.ersnet.org) has developed 10 concise principles for clean air, which summarise the scientific state of the art and provide guidance for public health policy. This editorial was written in order to explain these 10 principles. 1) Citizens are entitled to clean air, just like clean water and safe food . This principle, really, should be self-evident to the extent that one should be embarrassed to even mention it. But the reality is that millions of Europeans live in areas where it is unsafe to breathe the air around them. The most recent EU key directive on ambient air quality is Directive 2008/50/EC. It recognises the need to reduce pollution to levels which minimise harmful effects on human health. The limit values adopted for airborne particulate matter were, however, far higher than recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). For example, an annual average limit value for respirable particles (particulate matter with a 50% cut-off aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm; PM2.5) was set at 25 μg·m−3 which is 2.5 times higher than the level recommended by the WHO. WHO guidelines are based on health considerations only, and do not take into account the economical or technical feasibility of meeting the guidelines. The EU Directive recognises that there is no identifiable threshold for PM2.5 and states that policies should aim at general reductions in concentrations at urban background sites. However, no binding legislative measures have been taken so far to enforce this. A detailed …