e-Digest Statistics about: Air Quality
Emissions of Particulates (PM10), by source: 1970-2006
United Kingdom
|
thousand tonnes | |||||||
1970 |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 | |
| Road transport | 42 | 51 | 60 | 39 | 35 | 34 | 32 |
| Residential | 209 | 94 | 50 | 29 | 22 | 20 | 21 |
| Energy industries | 83 | 83 | 74 | 25 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| Other | 159 | 119 | 120 | 91 | 85 | 84 | 85 |
| Total | 494 | 347 | 304 | 184 | 153 | 150 | 152 |
Coal burning, diesel combustion, construction, mining and quarrying are the major sources of particulate emissions. Total emissions fell by 56 per cent (195 thousand tonnes) between 1980 and 2006.
Over the same period, emissions from residential fossil fuel use fell by 78 per cent and emissions from the energy industries fell by 84 per cent.
Emissions from road transport increased by 28 per cent between 1980 and the peak year of 1988 but by 2006 had fallen to 37 per cent below the 1980 level.
Note: Emissions estimates for the UK are updated annually to reflect revisions in methodology and the availability of new information. These adjustments are applied retrospectively to earlier years and hence there are differences from the data published in previous editions of the booklet.
Particulate matter is now increasingly measured by a method that determines the mass of a fraction of the particles in the air that are most likely to be deposited in the lungs. PM10 is the particulate matter which passes through a size-selective filter set to preferentially collect smaller particles: collecting 50 per cent of particles 10 microns (10 thousandths of a millimetre) in diameter and 95 per cent of particles of 5 microns.
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Page last modified: 13 March 2008
Page published: 13 March 2008