Brussels proposes to lower the exposure limit values to the main pollutants, without aligning on the thresholds set by the World Health Organization.
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Because air pollution is at the origin of more than 300,000 premature deaths each year in Europe and a litany of pathologies (stroke, cancers, infarction, asthma, growth delays, etc.), the Scientific and medical community demanded that the European Commission finally and completely aligns its standards with those of the World Health Organization (WHO). The ace. The proposal to revise the air quality directive published Wednesday, October 26 is not until then.
Brussels certainly proposes to clearly lower the exposure limit values to the main pollutants but not to the thresholds recommended by the WHO. Thus, for fine particles (PM 2.5), the most dangerous for health because they penetrate deep into the body, the annual limit should go from 25 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m 3 ) at 10 μg/m 3 by 2030, a level which remains twice as high as that of the WHO (5 μg/m 3 sup>). Same gap for the very toxic nitrogen dioxide (n0 2 éos) emitted mainly by road traffic: Brussels offers to lower your threshold to 20 μg/m 3 when l ‘WHO recommends 10 μg/m 3 .
For the Commission, the target of 2030 is an intermediate step to achieve the “zero pollution” objective of the European Green Deal by 2050, a deadline to reach carbon neutrality. “The more we wait to reduce this pollution, the higher the costs for the company,” said the vice-president of the commission on Wednesday, Frans Timmermans. The Commission recalls that air pollution also has an economic cost, estimated between 231 and 853 billion euros for European health systems.
“Zero pollution in 2050, it is far too late, it is now that it is necessary to cut pollution at the source, reacts Sophie Perroud, of the European network Health and Environment Alliance (Heal), which brings together more 70 organizations specializing in environmental health. The commission proposal does not respond to the emergency. We continue to demand a complete alignment of pollution thresholds on WHO guidelines, only capable of protecting the health of Europeans , at the latest in 2030. “
NGOs count on the support of the Parliament to achieve this. In May, European deputies had adopted a resolution to request to follow the WHO recommendations. But the parliament will not be alone at the helm. The revision proposal will now be the subject of a trilogue which also includes the Council. The discussions promise to be tight. Several states, including France and Germany, have already been sentenced by the European Union Court of Justice for repeated exceeding of standards. And the French government has once again been sentenced to a record fine (20 million euros) by the Council of State because it does not manage to comply with current European standards, however much less strict.
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