European Commission - Public Health: healthindicators.org

General information about this indicator

The indicator presented here is an ECHI shortlist indicator. The ECHI shortlist is a list of about 90 public health indicators, which has been developed by the European Commission together with the European Union Member States. Currently (2009-2011) a Joint Action for ECHIM is ongoing, which aims at implementing the ECHI shortlist. Twenty four European Union Member States and some other European countries are participating in the Joint Action (click here for the full list of participating countries). More information on ECHI and the Joint Action can be found at the ECHIM website. More information on the specifications of this indicator can be found in the indicator’s Documentation Sheet.

Indicator definition

The Structural Indicators (SIs) are based on measured concentrations at urban background stations in agglomerations. The urban population exposure to air pollution by particulate matter (PM10) is calculated as the population weighted annual mean concentration of particulate matter [in mg/m³].

Particulate Matter (PM) is an air pollutant consisting of a mixture of solid and liquid particles suspended in the air. PM10 refers to particulates with a diameter less than 10 micrometers. In general, smaller particles (PM10 and smaller) are more important for health effects than larger particles since they penetrate deeper into the lungs.

Source information

Eurostat, 2009. The data are available at the Eurostat website. For further information see Eurostat metadata.

Eurostat data of urban population exposure to air pollution by particulate matter is based on measured concentrations [in mg/m³] at urban background stations in agglomerations.

Based on the annual submissions of EU Member States' measured concentrations, processing of data and the compilation and review is done by the EEA in cooperation with ETC_ACC on behalf of the European Commission. AirBase - the European Air quality - is the public air quality database system of the EEA. It contains information submitted by the participating countries throughout Europe.

For this indicator ECHIM is still to decide which data source is to be preferred. Next to Eurostat, data on PM10 exposure are available in the ENHIS database and in WHO-Health For All.

Availability

Data are available for all countries participating in the Joint Action except for Cyprus, Latvia, Luxemburg, Malta, and Moldova. Data are updated annually.

Comparability between countries

A direct comparison between countries is severely limited due to differences in the design of the monitoring networks. As a result the available information on this indicator only allows a general overall trend at EU-level to be drawn. The indicator is subject to strong year-to-year fluctuations as it is determined by relatively rare episodic conditions, and these depend on particular meteorological conditions.

Comparability within countries

No remarkable changes in trends are reported.