Air pollution — key message 2

As the amounts of acidifying air pollutants have fallen, the area of acid-sensitive ecosystems (such as freshwaters and forest soils) adversely affected in Europe has considerably reduced. Nonetheless, biological recovery in freshwaters is slow. The area of sensitive terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems affected by an excess input of atmospheric nitrogen in the EEA-32 has only diminished slightly between 1990 and 2010. The EU’s long-term objective of not exceeding the so-called critical atmospheric pollutant loads, which ecosystems can tolerate, has not been met.