The European Environment Agency (EEA) published its annual ranking of air quality in European cities on Thursday. Once again, the data shows that the municipalities that perform best in this respect tend to be located in two distinct geographical regions of the continent – Scandinavia and Southern Portugal (including Madeira), The Mayor reports.
The city with the cleanest air in Europe is Uppsala, Sweden, with 3.5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic metre. This municipality, located north of the capital Stockholm, has taken a number of measures to make this a success.
Uppsala has introduced measures such as a ban on studded tyres on some main streets, a 30-kilometre zone in the city centre, an eco-zone for heavy vehicles, more thorough street cleaning and signal priority for buses. Residents are also being encouraged to use greener means of transport, such as bicycles, and the local culture fosters this way of thinking.
Other Swedish cities in the top three were Umeå (in northern Sweden) and Faro (in southern Portugal).
Overall view
What’s easy to see is the geographical distribution (and grouping) of the cities with the cleanest air in Europe. There is a large area of Scandinavia and a smaller one that includes the southernmost parts of Portugal (including the Atlantic island of Madeira).
The survey shows that only 13 European cities had average fine particulate matter concentrations below the World Health Organisation (WHO) limit of 5 micrograms per cubic metre of air (5 µg/m3). These cities include the four northern capitals: Reykjavik, Tallinn, Stockholm and Helsinki.
The Environment Agency is investigating levels of fine particulate matter in more than 350 cities from 30 EEA member states. The data are derived from ground-based measurements of fine particulate matter from more than 500 monitoring stations.
