With the publication of new guidelines for air pollutants, the World Health Organization (WHO) is putting industrialized countries, and especially the European Union, under pressure. The new guideline values ​​clearly show that the consequences of air pollution in the outside air have long been significantly underestimated. This applies in particular to fine dust and nitrogen dioxide. The previously valid guideline values ​​are from 2005. The new WHO recommendation for long-term exposure to fine dust PM2.5 is now 5 instead of the previous 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air (EU limit value 25 micrograms per cubic meter of air), the one for fine dust PM10 15 instead of the previous 20 micrograms per cubic meter of air (EU limit value 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air).The reduction in the annual limit value for nitrogen dioxide from previously 40 to 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air as well as the new introduction of a limit value for half-year exposure to ozone have fallen significantly.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.

  • Follow I follow

Around eight percent of the urban population in the European Union are currently exposed to long-term pollution with fine dust PM2.5, which already exceeds the limit values ​​of the EU;

It is even 77 percent if the previous WHO guideline values ​​are used as a benchmark.

The WHO emphasizes: If its guideline values ​​for fine dust PM2.5 were adhered to, around 80 percent of premature deaths attributable to this pollutant could be avoided.

WHO sets guidelines for preventive health purposes

The lowering of the guideline values ​​in Brussels should lead to new unrest. In March of this year, the European Parliament asked the EU legislators to update the EU air quality standards as soon as the new WHO guidelines are published and to align the limit values ​​with the recommendations. The current schedule provides for this update for the third quarter of 2022.

The World Health Organization sets its guideline values ​​purely as a preventive measure.

In doing so, she is looking for exposure-effect relationships: When does which relationship lead to which health effects in which dose?

Work on the new WHO guidelines began in 2016. In addition to the analysis of more than 500 publications, assessments by external experts were also carried out.

The stricter air quality standards are almost unanimously welcomed by environmental and health experts, but they also point to the difficulties in implementing the necessary air pollution control measures in all countries.

The Science Media Center (SMC) in Cologne asked numerous experts about the WHO's publication.

FAZ.NET summarizes their reactions:

Nino Künzli from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute was involved in developing the new guidelines:

“The guideline values ​​had to be corrected downwards, as very large long-term studies with several hundred thousand participants were published in the past 15 years, in which regions with very low pollution levels - for example Switzerland - were also involved. This made it possible to derive the relationship between the concentration of pollutants outside at the residential address and health, even for concentrations that are far below the previous reference values. The studies confirm what could not be proven 20 years ago: There are no “harmless threshold values” for air pollution. The new WHO guideline values ​​correspond to the lowest values ​​for which solid and replicable data are available. ""That every improvement in air quality is worthwhile - in heavily polluted as well as in less polluted regions".