Air pollution action plan released

The Scottish Government has released its strategy on air pollution, aimed at bringing Scotland’s air quality within legal limits.

The Scottish Government was required by the UK Supreme Court to produce the strategy after the UK failed to meet European legal air quality limits by a 2010 deadline.

The document, ‘Cleaner Air for Scotland (CAF) – The Road to a Healthier Future’, commits the Scottish Government to improve monitoring and modelling of air pollution, adopt World Health Organization guidelines on particulate matter pollution in legislation, and work to increase awareness of the problem.

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Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland welcomed new plans to implement World Health Organisation guidelines on safety standards for PM2.5 into statutory limits, along with a commitment to meet European air quality limits by 2020.

But FoE Scotland warned the new strategy is still in breach of the European Ambient Air Quality Directive.

Campaigners also expressed disappointment that the document does not include Low Emissions Zones, while highlighting that the document does not specify the funding available to tackle the problem.

The CAF report estimates that, across the UK, the impact of poor air quality on health costs around £15bn per year. It found the total annual cost of air pollution to the UK’s economy may be as much as £54bn.

In Scotland in 2010 fine particulate matter was associated with around 2,000 premature deaths and around 22,500 lost life-years across the population.

Levels of air pollution are breaking health standards in 32 official Pollution Zones across Scotland, including in parts of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen.

The strategy says: “The impacts of poor air quality are not distributed evenly across the population: it is the most vulnerable members of society – the elderly, the very young and those with cardiovascular and respiratory conditions – who bear the largest burden.”

Releasing the CAF document, minister for the environment and climate change Aileen McLeod said: “In recent decades polluting outputs have been reduced – but despite these efforts, pockets of poorer air quality still remain in many of our towns and cities.”

She added: “We must also highlight the opportunities to generate efficiencies and cost savings by linking air quality to other areas, such as climate change adaption and mitigation, transport and planning. Cleaner Air for Scotland aims to provide a framework within which this can be achieved, and is particularly important in the build-up to the forthcoming climate change negotiations in Paris next month.”

Friends of the Earth Scotland air pollution campaigner Emilia Hanna said: “Many people have put lots of time into creating this Strategy and it signals important steps in the right direction but it is very disappointing that Scotland will still be waiting for clean air well beyond 2020.

“Scotland is going to set tougher targets to protect health but doesn’t have a plan which will deliver them any time soon. In particular, there are not enough measures in the Strategy to get the most polluting traffic off our roads.”

She added: “The UK Supreme Court made it clear in April that there would have to be a fresh public consultation on air quality plans. The Scottish Government has not consulted the public on the detail of its Cleaner Air for Scotland Strategy since the legal ruling and is therefore failing to abide by the Supreme Court decision.

“European Law requires air quality plans to show how much each action to tackle toxic air will reduce levels of pollution. Cleaner Air for Scotland fails to spell this out and is therefore in breach of the European Ambient Air Quality Directive.”

Meanwhile the Scottish Greens highlighted that while Scotland will spend £3m this year on air quality measures, it will invest £700m on building new roads.

Alison Johnstone MSP, Scottish Green MSP for Lothian, said: “Successive governments and ministers have paid lip service to this public health scandal. Communities affected by dangerous levels of pollution have been waiting too long for practical action and serious investment. Today's publication, focusing on monitoring and awareness campaigns, while glossing over massive roadbuilding budgets, is like Groundhog Day.

“If we repeat the failure to invest seriously in walking, cycling, 20mph zones and low-emissions public transport, we will simply add to the strain on our health, our NHS, and our economy. It is clear that Green voices are needed more than ever to push this issue up the agenda, and get the Scottish Government to go further and faster so our town and city centres are clean and safe for all.”