About PlainAirQuality

Our mission is to make European air-quality figures accessible without paywalls, captchas, or registration walls. PlainAirQuality publishes country, station, and pollutant pages that any citizen, journalist, or researcher can search, compare, and cite in seconds — with honest labels for what is transcribed from a named EEA release, what is modeled, and what is still an editorial composite.

We currently publish pages for 28 countries, 39 monitoring stations, and 7 regulated pollutants. Every page answers some shape of: what does the air actually look like where I live, in numbers I can interpret? by comparing concentrations to two benchmarks: the European Union Ambient Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC, revised 2024) and the World Health Organization 2021 Global Air Quality Guidelines.

Our data

Source inputs that actually populate the database today:

• EEA Average Exposure Indicator (AEI) for PM2.5 — Air Quality Status Report 2025 Table 3, transcribed into country PM2.5 means for EU/EEA reporters (retrieved 2026-08-09). The UK is not in that table.
• EEA Burden of Disease (2022) — PM2.5-attributable premature deaths per country (UK excluded).
• Editorial station register — named EEA station codes and operators. Station concentrations are classification-adjusted modeled estimates from the country PM2.5 AEI (see methodology), not each station's own E1a series.
• Editorial composites (not EEA-verified) — country PM10, NO2, O3, and SO2 means remain on-page for orientation and are labeled as composites until a verified ingest lands.
• WHO 2021 Global Air Quality Guidelines — the health-evidence benchmark shown beside EU legal limits on every page.

We do not currently ingest Copernicus CAMS grids or live national-agency feeds into this database. Those agencies are cited only as context for benchmarks and for future ingest.

Methodology

Country PM2.5 is transcribed from the EEA AEI table. Station pages apply a disclosed classification adjustment to that national AEI. Detailed processing notes, the modeling rule, benchmark caveats, and known data limitations are on our methodology page. Material corrections are logged on the data changelog.

Updates

We refresh the transcribed EEA AEI table when a new Air Quality Status Report lands, and we record material changes on the data changelog. We do not currently auto-ingest Dataflow E1a or refresh within two weeks of every EEA release.

Not affiliated

PlainAirQuality is an independent data publisher. We are not affiliated with the EEA, the European Commission, Copernicus, the WHO, or any member-state government. We do not accept payment from government agencies, industry trade groups, or environmental NGOs for the editorial content on this site.

Editorial process

Guides, methodology summaries, and FAQ answers are prepared by PlainAirQuality and checked against the cited sources for technical accuracy before publication. Country PM2.5 and mortality tables render the transcribed EEA series via server-side SQL. Other country pollutant means are editorial composites. Station pages apply the transparent classification adjustment described in methodology and are labeled as estimates on-page.

Disclaimer

This site is for informational purposes only. Air-quality data comes from official European sources and is presented as published or as a disclosed derivation. While we strive for accuracy, we cannot guarantee completeness, and concentrations at any specific street, building, or moment may differ substantially from the station-level annual means we publish. Always consult local health authorities (national environmental agency, regional health board, or municipal advisories) for real-time exposure guidance, especially during pollution episodes, wildfires, or if you have a chronic respiratory or cardiovascular condition.

Contact

For questions, data corrections, or feedback, email hello@plainairquality.com or use our contact form. Corrections and removal requests are reviewed within two business days.