- The WHO today lowered the annual recommendations for nitrogen dioxide NO to a quarter of what is legally admitted.2 and PM2.5 particles, emitted in cities by motorized traffic, especially diesel vehicles.
- On the European Car-Free Day, Ecologists in Action asks city councils for a drastic and rapid reduction in current urban traffic in favor of pedestrians, bicycles and public transport, if they really want to protect the health of their citizens.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today published its long-awaited guidelines on air pollution levels. These guidelines, the last edition of which were approved in 2005, are the only globally scientifically recognized recommendations on the quality of the air we breathe, compliance with which significantly reduces risks to people.
The new guidelines are much stricter, demonstrating the extreme impact air pollution has on health, even at low levels. Thus, the recommended annual concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a toxic pollutant whose main source in cities is motorized traffic, has gone from 40 to 10 µg / m³ (micrograms per cubic meter). For its part, the annual guide for particles below 2.5 microns (PM2.5) –the most harmful to health– drops from 10 to 5 µg / m³, when the regulations allow 20 µg / m³.
Many cities have made progress in reducing NO pollution2 and PM2.5 in recent years. However, the data show that all Spanish cities currently exceed the new air quality guidelines established by the WHO, despite the sharp drop in their levels in 2020 as a result of the measures to combat COVID-19.
In this way, and taking as a reference the last year without confinements (2019), the levels of NO2 in Barcelona, Granada and Madrid they quadrupled the new annual WHO guide, exceeding the current legal limit value that coincides with the previous recommendation.
In the aforementioned year, cities such as A Coruña, Algeciras, Alicante, Almería, Avilés, Bilbao, Castellón, Ceuta, Córdoba, Cuenca, Donostia, Gijón, Girona, León, Lleida, Málaga, duplicated the new WHO guideline for this same pollutant. Murcia, Ourense, Oviedo, Palma, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Pamplona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santander, Seville, Tarragona, Torrelavega, València, Valladolid, Vigo, Vitoria and Zaragoza.
Small or medium cities such as Albacete, Cádiz, Cartagena, Ciudad Real, Guadalajara, Huelva, Huesca, Jaén, Logroño, Lugo, Melilla, Pontevedra, Salamanca, Santiago, Soria, Toledo and Tudela, among others, also passed the new guide in 2019 WHO for NO2.
He does not2 It causes around 7,000 premature deaths each year in Spain, according to the Carlos III Health Institute and the European Environment Agency. It is an irritant gas that causes respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lowers resistance to infection. Various studies have linked the mortality of the COVID-19 disease with this air pollutant.
NO2 is also the main precursor pollutant of tropospheric ozone, the atmospheric pollutant that has affected the largest area and population in Spain for years. The WHO has maintained its guideline at the recommended 100 µg / m³ since 2005, below the 120 µg / m3 per day allowed by current regulations.
Ecologists in Action emphasizes that the significant reduction in pollution levels that the WHO considers unhealthy should be an incentive for the different governments in order to advance as much as possible in improving air quality. These objectives must be taken as a goal and not the legal limits set by the regulations, which do not always guarantee the protection of health. At least as long as the legislation does not come closer to scientific knowledge, which is expected to happen in 2022, with the revision of the European Air Quality Directive.
The COVID-19 crisis has shown that the structural reduction of motorized traffic and changes in mobility patterns are the best tool to reduce air pollution in cities. Therefore, if municipalities want to protect the health of their citizens, they must quickly and ambitiously implement the Low Emission Zones (LEZ) to which they are obliged by the Climate Change Law before 2023, drastically reducing urban traffic.
The opposite of what cities like Madrid do, which has degraded their only and minimal LEZ, formerly known as Madrid Central, as well as the city of Barcelona, whose LEZ has promoted the renewal of vehicles with no effect on reducing NO levels.2.
On the European Car Free Day and in light of these data, Miguel Ángel Ceballos, spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción, declared: «We ask the authorities to consolidate good practices acquired during the pandemic such as proximity shopping, teleworking, administration electronics or the staggering of working hours, in addition to promoting electric collective transport and active pedestrian and cyclist mobility, redistributing urban space for the benefit of these means ”.
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