The German Society for Pulmonology and Respiratory Medicine (DGP) expects the World Health Organization (WHO) to recommend a reduction of the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) limit in the foreseeable future.
At present, the WHO is discussing whether the threshold in force in the EU still complies with current scientific findings, said Professor Holger Schulz from the Helmholtz Zentrum München of the "Welt". It is expected that the WHO would propose a reduction.
Schulz is one of the authors of the position paper that the DGP presented in November on the topic of air pollutants. It says in a central place: "Harmful effects of air pollutants are well studied and proven both in the general population as well as in patients with various underlying diseases." And: "A further significant reduction of air pollutants is required and a reduction of legal limits is required."
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Specifically, this means according to Schulz: "Based on nitrogen dioxide in my opinion, a limit of 30 micrograms per cubic meter of air makes sense." The nitrogen dioxide limit is currently an annual average of 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air, based on WHO recommendations. Schulz emphasized that it was the task of politics, not science, to set new upper limits. It is clear that air pollutants are harmful to health: "This is already detectable at values of 20 micrograms per cubic meter of air."
A group of more than 100 pulmonary physicians around retired pulmonologist Dieter Köhler had sparked a heated debate in January after questioning the health benefits of nitrogen dioxide limits. Later admitted the author of the opinion, the physician Dieter Köhler, a calculation error, but remained with the basic statement that the health risks of nitrogen oxides and fine dust and the limit values based on it are scientifically not sufficiently founded.