Towards the Assessment of Air Quality and its Possible Health Impacts in European Cities

Abstract

Europe is a highly urbanised continent. In 1990, more than 70% of its total population lived in cities. The concentration of human activities on a relatively small area causes enormous pressure on the natural system and has led to numerous environmental problems. In the last decade air quality problems and associated topics like exposure of citizens have been addressed through case studies. One of the first attempts to describe the air quality in a number of cities and investigate (dis)similarities between them was made within the GEMS-AIR project. In 1992, WHO/UNEP published a report “Urban Air Pollution in Megacities of the World”, summarising air quality data for the 20 most populated cities of the world (WHO/UNEP, 1992). WHO recently published their Concern for Europe’s Tomorrow study (WHO, 1994) in which an assessment of urban air quality and potential population exposure is given for European cities with more than 50.000 inhabitants; however this was not done through comparative city analysis but through statistical analysis of European air pollution concentration and population density fields.