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Air quality
Defra works to control and manage
air quality across the UK. The UK Government and the devolved administrations published the latest Air Quality Strategy for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 17 July 2007 - setting out a way forward for work and planning on air quality issues and the air quality standards and objectives to be achieved; introducing new policy framework for tackling fine particles and identifying potential new national policy measures which modelling indicates could give further health benefits and move closer towards meeting the Strategy’s objectives.
Latest
17 December 2009: Publication of Air Pollution in the UK: 2008. This is the latest in a long-running series of annual reports summarising measurements from the UK's national air pollution monitoring networks. It includes detailed pollution data, trends, maps and analyses from January to December 2008.
17 December 2009 – Statistics release: UK Emissions of Air Pollutants - 2008 results 298/09. 2008 results from the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) for UK emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) and ammonia.
Emissions of each of the four pollutants have fallen between 2007 and 2008, with decreases of 5 per cent for ammonia, 7 per cent for NMVOCs, 10 per cent for nitrogen oxides, and 14 per cent for sulphur dioxide. This represents a continuation of the long term trend of a reduction in emissions of these pollutants.
Since 1990, there have been decreases of 23 per cent for ammonia, 49 per cent for nitrogen oxides, 63 per cent for NMVOCs, and 86 per cent for sulphur dioxide.
15 December 2009 - Appointment of new Chair to the Air Quality Expert Group
30 November 2009 - Ministers speech: Speech by Jim Fitzpatrick MP at the Air Quality Summit in London, 30 November 2009
9 November 2009 - Consultation: On the transposition of Directive 2008/50/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe.
3 June 2009: Addendum to Guidelines for Halogens and Hydrogen Halides in Ambient Air (PDF 637 KB). Guidelines for Metals and Metalloids in Ambient Air for the Protection of Human Health (PDF 2.1 MB)
29 April 2009: The UK Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (UK PRTR) web pages are now available. These web pages will hold pollutant release data from a wide range of industrial installations across the UK, including refineries, power stations and less polluting activities that are regulated by local authorities. The UK PRTR will continue to see updates to data as more information becomes available. This may mean amendments to data as a verification exercise is still ongoing.
Page last modified: 17 December 2009