Environment 1 The current work on Air Quality Indicators Best needed “ Population exposure” vs. Best available “Population weighted concentrations” Ute Luksch, Eurostat E3 MEETING OF THE WORKING PARTY ON HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT LUXEMBOURG, 19 SEPTEMBER 2005  National monitoring station networks and limit values  Different concepts: CSI, revised and non-revised SI  SIs on air quality: the year 2001 and future work

Environment 2 Ozone stations EEA Topic Report 3/2003

Environment 3 AirBase stations ETC/ACC Technical paper 2004/1 Number of stations in the EU countries for which data for components of the daughter directives were available in AirBase, 2002 ( Data: D=daily, H= hourly)

Environment 4 Limit values Directive 1999/30 (PM) and 2002/3 (Ozone) l Concentration  24-hour average PM10 concentration above 50µg/m³  8-hour average ozone concentration above 120µg/m³ l Exceedance  35 times per calendar year for PM10  25 days per calendar year for ozone l Annual mean PM10 concentrations  2005: yearly mean above 40µg/m³  2010: yearly mean above 20µg/m³ ‘PM10' = particulate matter which passes through a size-selective inlet with a 50 % efficiency cut- off at 10 µm aerodynamic diameter (diameter of a spherical particle having a density of 1 gm/cm 3 that has the same inertial properties in the gas as the particle of interest).

Environment 5 EEA’s CSI 004 “Exceedance of air quality limit values in urban areas” l Definition: Fraction of the urban population potentially exposed to ambient air concentrations of pollutants. l The urban population: Total number of people living in cities with at least one monitoring station. l EU Limit value set for protection of human health (Limit values: “concentration” & “exceedence”) l Unit: Percentage of the urban population in Europe potentially exposed to ambient air pollution Source: European Environment Agency’s Core Set of Indicators.

Environment 6 DG ENV‘s revised SIs on Air Quality l Definition: Urban background measurements of ambient air pollution in agglomerations weighted by the population in this agglomeration l Units  Annual mean concentration of particulate matter (µg/m³)  Sum of daily maximum 8-hour mean concentrations of ozone over 35 ppb (µg/m³ day) Source: DG ENV’s Technical fiches on proposed improvements of Structural Indicators on air quality.

Environment 7 l Non-revised: “Population exposure” for the years 1998,2000,2001in % of urban population l Revised: “Population weighted concentrations” for the years 2001, 2002,2003 in µg/m³ (PM10) and in µg/m³ day (Ozone) SIs - a break down by country

Environment 8

9

10

Environment 11

Environment 12 “Population exposure” – best needed? l Black or white solution (100% or 0%; values between 0% and 100% are calculated as a mean over several stations). l Too sensitive to  quality problems in the national monitoring station networks: more than 100 urban stations (DE, FR) vs. less than 5 (DK, IE, SE).  malfunctions of a station (e.g. no measurements for some days, too high or too low values)

Environment 13 Future Work l Best available “Population weighted concentrations”  Possible modifications for SUMO35: No cut off for the natural ozone background (35ppb ozone) and mean instead of a sum (unit “µg/m³” instead of “µg/m³ day”)  Quality Assessment for the revised SIs (accuracy, comparability across countries and over time) l “Population exposure” – a long term solution  Improvements in the national monitoring station networks (very expensive)  or using modeled data (in cooperation with EMEP*) *Co-operative programme for monitoring and evaluation of the long-range transmissions of air pollutants in Europe, UN Economic Commission for Europe