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News

Air pollution goes down as Europe takes hard measures to combat coronavirus

News Published 25 Mar 2020 Last modified 23 Nov 2020

3 min read

Photo: © Kaspars Upmanis on Unsplash

The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) data confirm large decreases in air pollutant concentrations — of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations in particular — largely due to reduced traffic and other activities, especially in major cities under lockdown measures. Reductions of around half have been seen in some locations. The EEA’s data are measured hourly, on the ground, at about 3,000 monitoring stations across European countries.