Contribution of Natural Sources to Air Pollution Levels in the EU - A Technical Basis for the Development of Guidance for the Member States
Exceedences of air quality limit values represent breaches of Community law which can have significant legal consequences for the Member States. For some existing limit values, such as those in directive 1999/30/EC (1st Daughter Directive), an exceedence which is caused by particular natural sources can be ignored for the purposes of ensuring compliance with Community law.
A new air quality directive proposal is currently being negotiated in the Council and the European Parliament and this is likely to extend this principle to natural (non-anthropogenic) sources of pollution generally so long as the "natural contribution" can be quantified and documented. This could include sea-spray and biogenic organic aerosol amongst other materials. The aim of this report is to document those information and methodologies which are available to permit Member States to determine and document natural sources of air pollution. This information will later be incorporated into specific guidance to be developed by the European Commission in the context of implementing the new legislation once adopted by the Council and the European Parliament.
In this report different types of natural sources contributing to PM levels in Europe are identified according to experts’ judgment and based on literature studies. The methods currently implemented by research groups of the Member States for the identification and quantification of natural sources are also described.
The content of this report is based on discussions with experts from various Member States, on the results of a questionnaire which has been circulated to experts of all EU Member States, on available literature studies and on the outcomes of a workshop on “Contribution of natural sources to PM levels in Europe” organized by the JRC in Ispra in October 2006.
MARELLI Luisa;
2007-06-18
JRC37410
EUR 22779 EN,
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