ETC HE Reports

This report presents summarised information on the status of air quality in Europe in 2020, based on validated air quality monitoring data officially reported by the member and cooperating countries of the EEA. It aims at informing on the status of ambient air quality in Europe in 2020 and on the progress towards meeting the European air quality standards for the protection of health in the Ambient Air Quality Directives and the new World Health Organization air quality guidelines. The report also compares the air quality status in 2020 with the previous three years.

This report presents summarized information on the status of air quality in Europe in 2021, based on Up-To-Date data (i.e. prior to final quality control) and validated air quality monitoring data reported by the member and cooperating countries of the EEA. It aims at giving more timely and preliminary information on the status of ambient air quality in Europe in 2021 for five key air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, O3, NO2 and SO2). The report also gives a preliminary assessment of the progress towards meeting the European air quality standards for the protection of health and the new World Health Organization air quality guidelines, and compares the air quality status in 2021 with the previous three years.

This report provides outlooks to 2030 on population exposed to road, rail and aircraft noise as well as on health impacts. The outlooks comprise two scenarios, one that is conservative (i.e. the minimum implementation of existing and forthcoming regulations) and one optimistic scenario which includes a more extensive set of measures. The assessment is done in order to determine if the EU Action Plan 'Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil' with the commitment to reduce by 2030 the share of people chronically disturbed by noise from transport by 30 % compared to 2017, could be achieved considering the outlooks calculated.

This report estimates the health risk related to air pollution in 2020 based on the latest Air Quality Guidelines published by the World Health Organization. The estimates consider the number of premature deaths and years of life lost related to exposure to fine particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide across Europe. A sensitivity analysis to the changes in concentration-response functions and counterfactual concentrations is performed to understand the impact of the new Air Quality Guidelines on the mortality outcome estimates. The sensitivity analysis also includes the concentration response functions discussed in the ELAPSE study, a review on the latest European epidemiological studies.

This report provides an assessment of the impact of the ambient air pollutants PM2.5, NO2 and O3 on population health in Europe. It contains estimates of the morbidity related environmental burden of disease for ten risk-outcome pairs for Europe in 2019.

This scoping study outlines various options for methodologies that can underpin indicator(s) on the risk of (single/mixtures of) chemicals on various types of ecosystems, habitats and species. The aim of the indicator is to provide a sufficient and indicative level of information to contribute to risk governance. It can inform governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations and the general public on to what extent terrestrial ecosystems, habitats, or species, are put at risk by the occurrence of chemicals in the environment, as a consequence of human activities (e.g., farming). The report highlights the data required for the development of such an indicator and their availability through a review of existing databases. A case study illustrates the applicability of the indicator and the need for further development.

This report aims to support the on-going revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directives by providing a series of recommendations on the reciprocal exchange of information and reporting of ambient air quality (e-reporting) following the Commission Implementing Decision (2011/850/EU). It builds on the experience and understanding from the EEA and technical experts at its European Topic Centre for Human Health and the Environment (ETC HE) working with implementing provisions for reporting (IPR) and identifies areas for further efficiency gains in e-reporting, in particular concerning the H-K dataflows.

This report presents European interim air quality maps for 2021, which are based on the non-validated up-to-date (UTD) measurement data and the CAMS Ensemble Forecast modelling results, together with other supplementary data. It contains maps of PM10 and NO2 annual averages and ozone indicator SOMO35.

This report relates to the ETC technical proposal WP 2.1 to assess impacts on health and well-being from exposure to air and water pollution, environmental noise, chemicals and a changing climate in Europe. In this report the results of an umbrella review related to the effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution on children and adolescents with a separate evaluation of intervention studies.

The agricultural sector, and in particular livestock, are the main emitters of ammonia and methane in Europe. While ammonia contributes to the formation of secondary particles, methane is a greenhouse gas, a precursor of ozone and can have an indirect effect on particle concentrations. This study develops methods and provides elements of analysis on ammonia and methane emissions due to livestock farming in Europe: the geographical distribution of these emissions, the main types of farms and activities they originate from, technical measures to mitigate them, their impacts on human health and the environment.

O3 is considered to be the most damaging common air pollutant for vegetation. The current indicator used to protect vegetation against negative impacts of O3 is the AOT40. Nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that the impacts of O3 are more closely related to the instantaneous O3 flux or O3 dose absorbed through the stomata than to O3 exposure in the ambient air. For this reason, maps of POD1 (i.e. Phytotoxic Ozone Dose) for tree species of beech and spruce have been prepared using the methodology described in the Manual for modelling and mapping critical loads and levels of the Air Convention (CLRTAP). Subsequently, it can be concluded that the inclusion of POD for selected trees in routine mapping along with the other maps already produced is feasible.

This paper examines the creation of fine resolution maps at 100 m x 100 m resolution using statistical downscaling for the area of Prague, as a case study. This Czech city was selected due to the fine resolution proxy data available for this city. The reference downscaling methodology used is the linear regression and the interpolation of its residuals by the area-to-point kriging. Next to this, several other methods of statistical downscaling have been also executed. The results of different downscaling methods have been compared mutually and against the data from the monitoring stations of Prague, separately for urban background and traffic areas.

This report presents the results of the environmental burden of disease (or health risk) assessment related to air pollution in 2021. The estimates include all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality and morbidity health outcomes, with ten risk-outcome pairs considered for the cause-specific estimates. Cause-specific mortality and morbidity estimates are combined to allow assessing the overall impact on population health based on a common indicator, the disability-adjusted life year. Using estimates disaggregated by mortality and morbidity components allows for the identification of the related shares across European countries.

Trend calculations of air pollutants for the periods 2005-2021 have been applied. Sulphur dioxide shows the largest decrease of all pollutants with a concentration reduction of the order of 62-68 %. The agreement between reported emission data and measured concentrations are relatively good up to the year 2008, after which a large mismatch is observed. For NO2, a mismatch between the trend in air concentrations and NOx emissions is found. While the overall NOx emissions are reported to be reduced by 55 %, the measured NO2 data indicate a decline of the order of 38 %. For PM data (PM10 and PM2.5) we find an opposite mismatch, meaning that the PM concentrations show stronger downward trends than the reported emissions. This can be explained by the additional effect of reducing gaseous precursors of secondary PM. For O3, our findings are in line with earlier published studies noting that the annual mean ozone concentration has increased while the high peaks have been reduced. But the reduction of the peaks is now within only a few percent and non-significant.

This report presents European interim air quality maps for 2022, which are based on the non-validated up-to-date (UTD) measurement data and the CAMS Ensemble Forecast modelling results, together with other supplementary data. It contains maps of PM10 annual average, ozone indicator SOMO35 and NO2 annual average. Next to this, the report evaluates the PM2.5 annual mean interim mapping.

This report presents air quality maps for the EEA member and cooperating countries (and three microstates) for 2021, as well as the relevant exposure estimates for health related and vegetation related indicators. It also summarizes exposure estimates in the period 2005-2021. The report provides and documents background materials (maps, exposure estimates) for the European Environment Agency’s Air Quality in Europe 2023 online report.

This report presents a feasibility study to estimate the environmental burden of disease due to a set of chemicals in selected European countries for the year 2021. It contains case studies on lead, PFAS, phthalates, cadmium, pyrethroids and bisphenol A. A total of 15 risk-outcome-pairs were considered. Where possible, the aim was to calculate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). In addition, data from the HBM4EU-project was used to ensure that exposure was estimated consistently across Europe. It was shown that a significant burden of disease can be attributed to the 6 analyzed chemicals in the selected European countries. However, despite a standardised methodological approach, the report identifies and discusses a number of limitations, particularly due to varying availability and quality of input data, which hampers the overall comparability of the results.