Bradford Council has celebrated questionable success in its struggle to demonstrate compliance with the legal limit for toxic air pollution in the Air Quality Directive.
The authority published a graph (below) showing what it said was the average monthly NO2 levels for five ‘automatic’ sites within the CAZ dating back to September 2018.
Under the Air Quality Directive, which came into force in 2010, an annual level above 40 µg/m3 at any site is a breach of the legal limit and local authorities are not entitled to average data from different sites to bring the level below the legal limit.
Nevertheless, the graph issued by Bradford Council included a green line, representing the ‘legal limit’, with the average for the five sites below that line for the majority of the time.
A spokesperson for Bradford Council told Highways that the graph ‘is not intended to provide details on compliance with the air quality directive but to visually demonstrate the downward trend of our 5 accurate monitoring stations which are within the CAZ across the time period’.
To continue reading visit Highways.
If this article was of interest, then check out our features, 'Now I am become Uxbridge, destroyer of rational climate discourse' and 'Home County drivers face taxation without representation'.
