Editorial & Corrections Policy
PlainAirQuality is an independent air-quality data portal. This page explains where our numbers come from, how they are compiled, what we do and do not claim, and how to get an error fixed.
What we publish
We restate official European air-quality measurements in plain language and put two benchmarks side by side on every page: the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive limit value and the stricter WHO 2021 Global Air Quality Guideline. We do not generate our own measurements, run our own monitors, or model our own concentrations. Every figure is a restatement or a transparent derivation (for example a per-capita rate, or a ratio to the WHO guideline) of a published source value.
Where the data comes from
- European Environment Agency (EEA) Air Quality e-Reporting - the primary database of validated station measurements reported by member states under Directive 2008/50/EC.
- Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) - reanalysis and exposure context.
- National environment agencies - UBA (Germany), ADEME (France), ISPRA (Italy), GIOS (Poland), Defra (UK), and others, for station-level identity and metadata.
The named source and reporting year appear on every country, station, and pollutant page, with a link to our methodology.
How pages are compiled
Pages are built from a structured database we maintain, with the figures drawn directly from the source datasets rather than retyped by hand. The editorial team designs the data model, writes the analysis and explanatory text, sets the benchmarks shown, and defines the validation checks that run when the data is rebuilt, for example, range checks against physically plausible concentrations and consistency checks between a country total and the sum of its parts. When a source agency releases a new reporting cycle, the database is refreshed and the figures change accordingly.
We are deliberate about what we claim: the analysis and editorial framing are written by people; the underlying numbers come straight from the public datasets named above. We do not claim that a person re-keys or individually re-verifies every one of the thousands of values on the site, they come from the official source and are checked in aggregate.
Mortality and health figures
Premature-death figures attributed to air pollution are modeled attributable estimates, not counted deaths. They follow the concentration-response methodology used by the EEA (HRAPIE / WHO functions). We label them as estimates wherever they appear and we do not present them as a literal body count.
Corrections
If you find a number that looks wrong, a value that contradicts the source agency, a stale reporting year, a mislabeled station, or a benchmark that has been updated, please email corrections@plainairquality.com with the page URL and what you believe is correct. We trace every report back to the source dataset. If the source supports the correction, we fix it at the data layer and the change propagates to every page that uses that value; if the figure is correct as published, we will explain the source and the methodology.
Independence
PlainAirQuality is funded by display advertising and is editorially independent of any government agency, monitoring operator, industry trade group, or environmental NGO. No source agency reviews or approves our content before publication.