Air quality statistics
An annual update on concentrations of major air pollutants in the UK.
Documents
Details
This publication summarises the concentrations of major air pollutants as measured by the Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN) across the聽UK. This release includes statistics on聽the concentrations of:
- nitrogen dioxide (NO2)
- particulates (PM2.5)
- particulates (PM10)
- ozone (O3)
The release also covers the number of days when air pollution was 鈥楳oderate鈥� or higher for any one of five pollutants listed below:
- nitrogen dioxide (NO2)
- particulates (PM2.5)
- particulates (PM10)
- ozone (O3)
- sulphur dioxide (SO2)
The release also covers progress towards meeting two PM2.5 concentrations targets聽in聽England:聽
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Population Exposure Reduction Target聽
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Annual Mean Concentration Target
Improvements in air quality help reduce harm to human health and the environment.
The statistics in this publication are based on data from the Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN) of air quality monitors. You can check current air quality聽levels聽and forecasts聽in your area, or sign up to receive alerts,聽by using聽the聽.聽AURN monitoring data is available from the new聽, and from the聽聽website which also contains information about monitoring networks for other UK air pollutants.
Air quality in the UK is strongly linked to anthropogenic聽(human-caused)聽emissions of pollutants. For more information on UK emissions data and other information please refer to the聽air quality and emissions statistics 扒哥吃瓜 page.
The monitoring data is continuously reviewed and subject to change when issues are highlighted. This means that the time series for certain statistics may vary slightly from year to year. You can access editions of this publication via The National Archives or the links below.
The datasets associated with this publication can be found here ENV02 - Air quality statistics.
As part of our ongoing commitment to compliance with the聽聽we wish to strengthen our engagement with users of air quality data and better understand how the data is used and the types of decisions that they inform. We invite users to聽, so that we can retain your details, inform you of any new releases of Air Quality statistics and provide you with the opportunity to take part in user engagement activities that we may run. If you would like to register as a user of Air Quality data, please provide your details in the attached聽.
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2008
Defra statistics: Air Quality and Industrial Emissions
Updates to this page
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Annual update.
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Text added to landing page.
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Annual update.
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Contact details updated.
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Annual update.
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Figures for 2022 published.
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New addition including 2021 data published.
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Figures for 2020 Published.
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Amendment to text of attachment entitled Summary.
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This publication has been updated to address accessibility issues. Changes include modification of alt text, improvement to the colour contrast of figures, removal of merged cells in tables, and tweaks to formatting such as subscripting and HTML links. Some of the text has been reworded to improve clarity and understanding, but no changes have been made to the statistics since the initial publication in February.
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Figures for 2019 published
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Release including 2018 data published
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Annual figures released
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New release with figures up to 2016 published.
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Annual update.
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new figures for 2014 published
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Annual update to publication.
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First published.
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Air quality statistics - 2012 data published.
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Addition of the Pre-release announcement published February 2013.