Air pollutants, EU limits vs WHO 2021 guidelines
According to the European Environment Agency Air Quality e-Reporting database (April 2026 vintage), the European Union regulates the ambient concentration of seven main pollutants under the Ambient Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC, revised October 2024) and the Fourth Daughter Directive (2004/107/EC). The table below shows the current binding EU annual or daily limit alongside the stricter WHO 2021 health-evidence guideline. Across the 27 member states plus the United Kingdom, more than 4,000 fixed monitoring stations report concentration data under EEA dataflow E1a, which is the upstream of every figure on this site. PM2.5 alone contributes to approximately 238,000 attributable premature deaths per year across the EU-27 per the EEA 2022 burden-of-disease assessment (modeled estimates). See our methodology page for refresh cadence and full source attribution.
| Pollutant | EU limit | EU period | WHO 2021 | Primary sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benzene | 5 µg/m³ | annual mean | - | Vehicle exhaust, petrol stations, industrial solvents |
| Carbon Monoxide | 10 mg/m³ | 8-hour max | 4 mg/m³ | Incomplete combustion (vehicles, heating, industry) |
| Coarse Particulate Matter (PM10) | 40 µg/m³ | annual mean | 15 µg/m³ | Dust, construction, road wear, agriculture, wind-blown soil, sea salt |
| Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) | 25 µg/m³ | annual mean | 5 µg/m³ | Combustion (vehicles, heating, industry), wood-burning, agricultural ammonia |
| Ground-level Ozone | 120 µg/m³ | 8-hour max | 100 µg/m³ | Secondary pollutant formed by sunlight reacting with NOx and VOCs from traffic, industry, solvents |
| Nitrogen Dioxide | 40 µg/m³ | annual mean | 10 µg/m³ | Road traffic (especially diesel), power generation, industry |
| Sulfur Dioxide | 125 µg/m³ | daily mean | 40 µg/m³ | Coal and oil combustion, industrial processes, shipping (heavy fuel oil) |