Asthma Society of Ireland’s highlight Ireland's poor air quality in clean air campaign

‘Air pollution presents a very serious risk to public health’, say campaigners seeking better monitoring

Significant failings in the monitoring of air quality in Ireland have been highlighted in an Asthma Society of Ireland’s clean air campaign.

The campaign, launched yesterday in the College of Medicine and Health Science at University College Cork, showed how Ireland had fallen behind European air monitoring standards.

Northern Ireland, with its population of 1.7m, has 20 air monitoring sites while the Republic, with 4.7m, has only 31.

The society’s chief executive, Sharon Cosgrove, said people with chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma, were vulnerable to the effects of air pollution.

She said it was very worrying that in some parts of the country, air quality was breaching World Health Organisation recommendations.

Sharon Cosgrove

“It is vital we do everything we can to limit the levels of air pollution we expose our citizens to and have accurate information on the actual quality of our air.”

However, the country’s monitoring infrastructure was designed to meet the requirement of the EU directive rather than follow the lead of many other countries where the protection of public health was paramount.

“Ireland needs to develop a clean air act and we need an extensive air quality monitoring system spread across the entire country that is capable of reporting pollution levels to the general public in real-time,” she said.

“Air pollution presents a very serious risk to public health and needs significant investment by the Government if we are to prevent more deaths.”

More than 400,000 Europeans die prematurely from the effects of air pollution every year — 10 times the number who die from road traffic accidents.

Nearly 2,000 lives are lost on the island of Ireland every year as a result of exposure to particulate pollution.

The campaign includes an online petition at www.asthma.ie that asks political parties to prioritise air quality policy in the run-up to and following the general election.

People are being urged to sign the petition calling for three commitments:

• Implement the nationwide smoky coal ban as soon as possible;
• Expand the air monitoring network to every county in the country;
• Draft new clean air legislation to World Health Organisation air quality standards to make Ireland a world leader in tackling air pollution.

Ireland’s air quality is monitored and reported on by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but only half the counties actually have monitoring sites. There are only three monitoring sites capable of detecting both of the standard parameters for particulate matter (PM 2.5, PM 10) and reporting them in real time — that is, within an hour of measurement.

And, because Ireland’s real-time air quality data is so weak, it is not included on European air quality indices.

The director of the Centre for Research into Atmospheric Chemistry at UCC, Prof John Sodeau, said the Government needed to invest significantly in the EPA’s air monitoring section because the country was at least 10 to 15 years behind where it should be.