UK admits ‘challenges’ after WHO slashes its air pollution targets

UK air pollution limits are now four times above recommended safe levels after the World Health Organisation changed limits, prompting the Government to suggest meeting new targets might be impossible to achieve.

In response to the WHO cutting safe limits by up to 75 per cent for some pollutants, the Government said meeting the new targets, which would require reducing petrol and diesel traffic and limiting wood-burning stoves would be a “challenge … particularly in large cities and for people’s daily lives”.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) should not exceed an annual mean concentration of 10 micrograms per cubic metre, compared to previous limits of 40, the WHO said yesterday.

The UK’S national limit on NO2, which is released from vehicles, gas boilers and power stations, had previously matched the WHO’S limits.

The guideline annual limit for fine particulate matter PM2.5, considered the most dangerous pollutant because of its ability to enter the bloodstream, was halved from 10 micrograms per cubic metre to five.

The national limit on PM2.5, which in the UK is mainly produced by woodburning stoves and diesel traffic, is 20.

The figures are the biggest single jump in the WHO’S regularly updated guidelines, which are renewed every year based on new scientific evidence.

Already between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths a year are attributed to longterm air pollution exposure, in the UK, and around seven million worldwide. Since the last guidelines were updated in 2005, scientists have linked air pollution to sight loss, dementia, pregnancy loss and psychotic episodes in teens.

In response to the new guidelines, the Government pointed to a consultation on proposed new targets early next year and said air pollution had been reduced significantly since 2010.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “We will consider the updated WHO guidelines on PM2.5 to inform the development of air quality targets but we must not underestimate the challenges these would bring particularly in large cities and for people’s daily lives.”

The Government has banned the sale of wet wood for domestic burning, but critics say the law does not go far enough to tackle air pollution from wood-burning stoves, which now accounts for 38 per cent of primary PM2.5 sources.

It has repeatedly pushed back on calls to increase its guidelines on safe limits, and earlier this year the EU’S Court of Justice last year said the UK’S own legal limits had been “systematically and persistently” broken over the last decade.

Environmental charity Clientearth said the new guidelines were a “wakeup call”. Andrea Lee, clean air campaigns manager at Clientearth, said: “These new guidelines reflect the best available science and the conclusion is irrefutable: air pollution, even at levels lower than previously thought, seriously endangers people’s health and action needs to be taken.”