Air pollutants, EU limits vs WHO 2021 guidelines

The European Union regulates seven main ambient 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. Country PM2.5 figures elsewhere on this site come from the European Environment Agency Average Exposure Indicator (2021-2023), transcribed in August 2026; PM2.5 was linked to 238,378 attributable premature deaths across 27 countries with a published Burden of Disease row for 2022 (no UK row). We do not currently ingest EEA Dataflow E1a hourly series or Copernicus CAMS grids. See our methodology page. Pollutants without a station sample on this site link to the guide instead of an empty ranking page.

Download the EU-27 AEI extract cited on this page: eea-aei-statistics.csv (CC BY 4.0). Also on Statistics.

Pollutant EU limit EU period WHO 2021 Primary sources
Benzene Limits in taxonomy, no station sample here 5 µg/m³ annual mean - Vehicle exhaust, petrol stations, industrial solvents
Carbon Monoxide Limits in taxonomy, no station sample here 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)