Revised EU and WHO air quality thresholds: Where does Europe stand?

One year after the new WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines were published, the European Commission proposed revisions to the Ambient Air Quality Directives, seeking to align European Union air quality standards more closely with WHO recommendations. Here, we employed Bayesian geostatistical regression models to estimate at 1 km 2 spatial resolution the number of Europeans that would be currently exposed to levels above the new suggested thresholds for the three most harmful pollutants, namely PM 2. 5 , PM 10 , and NO 2. The results have shown that in 2021, 97.6% (95% credible interval: 95.1, 99.2%) of the total European population was exposed to PM 2. 5 levels exceeding the new WHO annual limit values, while 47.5% (36.2, 59.5%) lived in areas where the revised EU thresholds were exceeded. For PM 10 , the proportion of people exposed to concentrations above the WHO annual thresholds was estimated at 62.5% (54.0, 70.9%) and at 29.6 (21.9, 37.0%) above the EU values, whereas for NO 2 , the estimates were at 67.4% (57.9, 75.8%) and 20.2% (13.3, 28.5%), respectively. Our high-resolution model-based predictions are readily available to support policy makers and scientists working toward achieving the ambitious European zero-pollution vision for 2050. • Assessment of areas exceeding the new WHO and EU limit values for PM 2. 5 , PM 10 , and NO 2 concentrations at 1 km 2 resolution in 2021. • 97.6% and 47.5% of Europeans were exposed to PM 2. 5 concentration levels above the new annual WHO and EU thresholds, respectively. • The proportion of Europeans living in areas with PM 10 and NO 2 concentrations above these levels is lower than for PM 2. 5 but still high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]