Air pollution policies in European cities: single-focused and holistic solutions

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Background and Aim Poor air quality is recognized as a major environmental health problem requiring immediate action. What may be still lacking attention, however, is how the path taken to reach improvements matters for health. Air pollution policies can be narrowly focused on reaching concentration targets with no further benefits to society, or can deliver health co-benefits, such as physical activity promotion or noise reduction when reducing car use or promoting active travel. Some cities may take the opportunity of tackling air pollution to deliver much more broadly on health improvements. This paper examines the balance of single vs holistic policy focus in current air pollution strategies adopted across a range of UK and German cities. METHODS: A framework was developed to categorize air quality policies as holistic or single-focused. Local Clean Air Plans from 2015 onwards were analyzed for a selection of nine UK and nine German cities. The importance given to each type of approach was estimated by counting the number of distinct policies in each camp, weighted by considerations of funding allocation and level of concreteness (e.g. implementation schedule). RESULTS:The focus on holistic approaches ranged from 30% (in Frankfurt am Main) to 87% (in Stuttgart) in the selected German cities, with an average across cities of 68% of the policy strategies taking on a holistic approach (vs 32% single-focused). In contrast, UK cities’ focus on holistic policies ranged from 9% (in London) to 79% (in Cardiff), with an average of 46%. CONCLUSIONS:While some UK cities, such as London, have been heralded as exemplary in their approach to tackling air pollution, they seem to often miss an opportunity to tackle health more holistically. German cities on the other hand generally seem to have espoused broader concepts of health promotion in their approach to air pollution mitigation. KEYWORDS: Air pollution, Health co-benefits, Particulate matter, Policy, Traffic-related, cities