MONET 2030: Particulate matter concentrations

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal description

«Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality. […] However, many more efforts are needed to fully eradicate a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues.»

Swiss target 3.9: During their entire life cycle, chemicals have no harmful effect on people’s health. The greatest environmental risk factor to health comes from particulate matter emissions (PM10) as well as their precursor emissions. Compared with 2005 these emissions have to be reduced by roughly 50%.

Significance of the indicator
The indicator shows the annual average particulate matter concentrations (PM10) in several types of monitoring stations. Chronic exposure to particulate matter is a major health risk. A reduction in these concentrations, therefore, is a step towards sustainable development.

Help for interpretation
Particulate matter suspended in the atmosphere come in particular from mechanical processes and combustion.

International comparability
PM10 is an international standard air quality indicator.

Synthesis

Comments: synthesis of trends observed for the 5 types of station: urban traffic (UT), urban (U), suburban (S), rural (R), pre-Alps/Jura (P/J).

The assessment of each variable is expressed by a value without dimension (-1 for a negative assessment, 0 for an unchanged assessment, +1 for a positive assessment). These values are then added up and the result sets the general trend of the indicator.

This indicator provides information on the concentrations of particulate matter in the five types of monitoring stations (town centre, street / town centre, park / suburban zone / rural zone / pre-Alps-Jura) in micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m3).
Data are collected by the Federal Office for the Environment’s (FOEN) National Air Pollution Monitoring Network (NABEL). This network is made up of 16 monitoring stations throughout Switzerland that have been measuring air pollution since 1997. Prior to that year, the particulate matter concentrations were calculated using measurements of Total Suspended Particles (TSP). These are composed of inhalable particulate matter (70%-80%) and larger particles.
The immissions threshold for inhalable particulate matter (PM10) came into force on 1 March 1998 with the revision of the Ordinance on Air Pollution Control. The average annual value of PM10 must not exceed 20 μg/m3; the average daily value is allowed to exceed the threshold of 50 μg/m3 no more than once a year.

Eurostat - Urban population exposure to air pollution by particulate matter

FOEN – Topic Air

Swiss target 3.9: During their entire life cycle, chemicals have no harmful effect on people’s health. The greatest environmental risk factor to health comes from particulate matter emissions (PM10) as well as their precursor emissions. Compared with 2005 these emissions have to be reduced by roughly 50%.

International target 3.9: By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination.