Pollution in EU cities, while slowly improving, is still killing more than a quarter million people each year, a new report finds.
Europe’s cities are failing to rein in pollution fast enough, leaving hundreds of thousands of people to die each year as a result of poor urban air quality.
That’s according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors, which examines whether European Union rules to improve air quality and noise pollution are working.
The current picture isn’t pretty. Air quality, while slowly improving, is far from safe, the report finds. At least a quarter of a million people die each year in the EU as result of pollution from particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone. Transport and domestic heating are the top emitters of these.
Noise pollution, mostly caused by transport, also contributes to around 12,000 early deaths a year in Europe, and 48,000 cases of heart disease.
“The fact is that cities struggle to address air and noise pollution effectively,” said the external auditor of the EU in a new report. “Reasons for this range from poor coordination by the authorities to the questionable effectiveness of measures, not to mention local resistance against them.”
The EU is making progress on reducing pollution — but it’s still a way off from more ambitious targets due to come in from 2030. Road traffic remains one of the major contributors to air and noise pollution in the EU’s large cities, said the auditors, who argue that antipollution measures in cities should “target the transport sector.”
Other key pollution sources include manufacturing and extractive industry, waste and agriculture.
Time to clear the air
Air pollution generated by cars and lorries is the biggest contributor to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution and is a “major problem” for cities, according to the ECA. The report focuses on Greek capital Athens, Kraków in Poland, and Barcelona in Spain — all facing the scourge of NO2 pollution.
High concentrations of NO2 can damage the human respiratory system. Across the bloc in 2020, 49,000 premature deaths were attributable to exposure to NO2 concentrations above the World Health Organization guideline level of 10 µg/m3, according to the European Environment Agency. That’s more than double the number of annual deaths in road traffic accidents across the EU.
Transport also contributes to other kinds of pollution, like high levels of ozone.
« Ozone is generated on the basis of the precursor emission — so NO2 coming from road transport, » said Katarzyna Radecka-Moroz, a member of the audit team. « So what the authorities should concentrate on is the reduction of NO2. »
It’s getting hot in here
While transport is responsible for most NO2 pollution, the biggest killer is fine particulate matter (PM2.5), accounting for 253,000 deaths in 2021. PM pollution predominantly comes from domestic heating using solid fuels like coal or wood, the report finds.
Sixty-two percent of PM2.5 pollution and 43 percent of the chunkier PM10 pollution comes from domestic heating.
The report finds switching from solid fuels to nonsolid fuels improves air quality, taking the example of Kraków. That could mean switching from a coal, wood or gas powered heater to an electric heat pump — which would be good for both air quality and climate.
But it could also mean switching from wood (classed as a renewable fuel) to natural gas (a fossil fuel), which would improve air quality but increase net CO2 emissions.
A not-so-silent killer
Road traffic is also the main source of noise pollution, followed by railways and aircraft. The WHO considers environmental noise to be the second-greatest environmental contributor to disease burden in the EU after air pollution.
A 2030 target of a 30 percent reduction in the number of people harmed by transport noise is unlikely to be met, said the ECA. The EU is looking at a decline of 19 percent at best — while a worst-case scenario could even see levels increase by 3 percent by 2030.
The ECA wants the European Commission to look into introducing EU noise reduction targets and limits in the Environmental Noise Directive, and to align noise exposure reporting thresholds as closely as possible with WHO recommendations.
« The numbers are quite clear, » said Klaus-Heiner Lehne, the ECA member responsible for the audit. « This is a key health aspect, and so from it [it] is quite logical that something has to be done on this because obviously it’s one of the key jobs of politicians to protect people.”
Low-emission zones: Effective but divisive
Cities and countries have been slow to comply with existing EU air and noise quality rules, according to the ECA. Environmental law accounts for the largest number of infringement cases launched by the Commission against countries, with more than 100 cases concerning air quality and noise pollution directives.
The report also found that the Commission’s infringement procedures were « often quite lengthy » — two unresolved cases on pollution had been open for over a decade — and sometimes « partially ineffective in resolving the underlying non-compliance issue. »
The ECA says low-emission zones can help to reduce air and noise pollution, while acknowledging that they’re an « increasingly sensitive issue. » The schemes exclude some polluting vehicles from driving in certain areas to improve air quality — and can be politically risky and socially divisive.
Some rebel cities across Spain have been refusing to implement them (going against national law) while London last year saw a wave of vigilante vandals destroying ULEZ monitoring cameras.
To fix that, the ECA’s Lehne called for « better planning and some more flexibility, not such strict thresholds, » in order to « take the people with you. »
« If you have a city where the average age of the car is 12 years or even more, and you forbid cars that that are older than 12 years in the low-emission zone area, it’s obvious that you will face a problem, » he added.