Over in the EU our cousins have just brought in legislation that gives EU citizens the “right to claim and obtain compensation when their health has been damaged due to a violation of air quality rules set in the directive”. This marks quite a change from this 2022 decision where the European Court of Justice ruled that European Union countries which fail to keep air pollution below agreed levels do not have to provide financial compensation to citizens - "European directives setting standards for ambient air quality are not, as such, intended to confer rights on individuals, the violation of which could give them a right to compensation". At the same time, the EU has defined tighter limits on air pollution.
Here are the new limits and how they compare to the UK and Wold Health Organisation (WHO):
Some of the interesting differences between the EU and UK limits are:
The annual nitrogen dioxide (NO2) EU limit is half that of the UK, which overall increases the health of the population.
There are no daily UK limits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and NO2 concentrations.
The hourly NO2 EU and UK limit concentrations are the same, except the UK can breach the limit up to 18 times per year, while the EU can only breach the limits up to 3 times per year.
While the directive gives citizens the right to compensation if their health has been affected by air pollution, and the directive clearly defines limits on air pollution, we wonder what challenges citizens might face when trying to link their health to air pollution. For reference, the full directive can be found here.
Back to base
A year yesterday, our Brixton air quality monitoring node was born, bringing forth real-time, hyper-local air quality data. We reported back in January that Brixton had bust through the annual WHO limits for daily NO2 breaches within the first week of 2024. Looking back over the past year, how has Brixton done overall? #spoileralert: pretty badly, with daily limits being broken more often than not.
But is there perhaps a slight improvement in the number of days where the limits are breached? As with much air quality monitoring, it’s hard to tell. Although from the data below it looks like the number of breaches are decreasing, you have to compare the data from the previous year for the same month to reduce any seasonality effects. We’ll get back to you this time next year with an update!
Hi Will - interesting stuff! School runs definitely make a big difference - hopefully roll out of school streets across Lambeth will help. On benchmarks, we decided to go with WHO to make it applicable globally. There is a mishmash of different limits and indices used across the world so WHO levels are the only really comparable ones!
Also, an observation I noted this week. Traffic levels on Brixton Hill have reduced dramatically this week. It appears that Croydon, Southwark and Bromley have their half-term school holidays, however, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Merton, Surrey, Sutton, Lewisham, Bexley and Kingston Upon Thames have theirs next week. I appreciate this is not true data lead science, but it does make you wonder, is all the traffic we witness travelling along Brixton Hill as a result of residents from Croydon, Southwark and Bromley? TfL needs to conduct a proper traffic study using the ULEZ camera technology to see if there are patterns that future public transportation solutions can help solve.