Policies to reduce air pollution have led to improved air quality in Europe over the last three decades. However, in some European cities air pollution still poses risks to health. You can use the European city air viewer to check how the air quality was in your city over the past two years and to compare it with air quality in other cities across Europe.
Cities are ranked from the cleanest city to the most polluted, on the basis of average levels of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, over the past two calendar years.
Fine particulate matter is the air pollutant with the highest impact on health in terms of premature death and disease. This tool is focused on long term air quality, with long term exposure to air pollution causing serious health effects.
The World Health Organization has established a health-based guideline for long term exposure to fine particulate matter of 10 μg/m3. The European Union has set an annual limit value for fine particulate matter of 25 μg/m3 under policies to deliver clean air in Europe.
The viewer presents air quality as:
- good for levels of fine particulate matter that are under the annual guideline value of the World Health Organization of 10 μg/m3,
- moderate for levels from 10 to below 15 μg/m3;
- poor for levels from 15 to below 25 μg/m3; and
- very poor for levels at and above the European Union limit value of 25 μg/m3.
In Europe, we benefit from the most comprehensive air quality monitoring network in the world. Here we present levels of fine particulate matter in over 300 cities from across EEA member countries. Data comes from on the ground measurements of fine particulate matter, taken by over 400 monitoring stations.
eea.europa.eu
