EU targets deadly air pollution, pushes for cleaner water
The European Commission proposed on Wednesday tougher legal limits on health-damaging dirty air and rules to make pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies pay to clean up wastewater polluted by their products.
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The European Commission proposed on Wednesday tougher legal limits on health-damaging dirty air and rules to make pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies pay to clean up wastewater polluted by their products. The European Union's executive proposed three laws targeting health and environment-damaging air and water pollution. Among them is a requirement that, by 2030, EU countries must meet new legally-binding air pollution limits that will be closer to the stricter World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.
The WHO tightened its air quality guidelines last year, hoping to push countries toward clean energy and prevent deaths caused by dirty air. "Air pollution is still the largest environmental threat to our health. The impacts are worse for the most vulnerable - children, the elderly, people with certain medical conditions," EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius told Reuters in an interview.
Air pollution causes 300,000 premature deaths in Europe each year. Sinkevicius said the tougher EU rules could reduce such deaths by 70% over the next 10 years. Prolonged exposure to air pollutants, like particulate matter from industry and nitrogen dioxide from traffic, can cause diabetes, lung disease and cancer.
The proposal will set air quality standards for 2030, such as cutting fine particulate matter by more than a half, with a goal of zero pollution by 2050. EU countries and the European Parliament must negotiate and approve the plans. Europe's air quality has improved over the last decade, but many countries still breach the current EU limits. The European Court of Justice has found countries including France, Poland, Italy and Romania guilty of illegal air pollution.
The new EU rules would also ensure that citizens can claim compensation if their health suffers as a result of illegal air pollution, including through collective class actions. EU countries will separately determine how to achieve air quality standards and where to set any penalties.
Another proposal would make companies responsible for some of the cost of cleaning up the pollution their products release into wastewater across the EU - a move that would target the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. The EU proposal would seek to make the wastewater sector energy neutral by 2040, ensuring its production of, for example biogas, offset any energy it used.
It will also seek to increase the list of controlled pollutants in ground or surface water and reduce toxic or persistent chemical limits to improve the quality of rivers, lakes and wetlands.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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