An Environmental Protection Agency report has confirmed that vehicular road use is increasing at such a rate that new EU limits for air pollutants are unlikely to be met for years.
This brings traffic restrictions in Irish cities a step nearer.
Dublin and Cork will find it difficult to stay within recently adopted EU standards for fine particulate matter (microscopic dust known as PMs1]s0]) and nitrogen dioxide levels. They are directly related to traffic levels and are of growing concern because of their impact on human health and the environment, according to the EPA's latest report on Irish air quality for 1998.
The main EU air quality directive requires microscopic dust to be reduced to protect human health where the level is exceeded. Reducing traffic is considered the most effective, if not the only, way of reducing concentrations of these pollutants.
Traffic restrictions have been introduced in major European cities, including Paris and Rome, and would appear to be inevitable here.
The report also highlights the need for a "very substantial increase in the level of air quality monitoring" throughout the State but concentrates on urban areas. It confirms that monitoring continues to be somewhat haphazard and it instances where equipment in College Street, Dublin - one of the capital's busiest streets - College Street proved unreliable.
Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter will be the pollutants receiving most attention as the agency attempts to increase the small number of monitoring stations checking for major traffic pollutants over the next two years .
Having identified the need for major review of air monitoring networks in the Republic, the EPA is drawing up a detailed programme. Most data are obtained from local authorities now.
"This will include a substantial increase in the level of air quality monitoring and an emphasis on continuous monitoring for priority pollutants in urban areas," according to the EPA's senior scientific officer, Mr Michael McGettigan.
Extended monitoring of fixed measurement stations will be supplemented by greater back-up of mobile units. The first of these is already operating in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. Their deployment will indicate where permanent monitoring will be required, or special checks need to be made for specific pollutants.
On other fronts, however, significant improvements are recorded. Smoke and sulphur dioxide concentrations are "very low"; easily meeting Irish and EU limits. Extending legislation prohibiting sale of smoky fuels in the urban areas of Dundalk, Drogheda, Limerick, Arklow and Wexford has quickly translated into improvements.
Lead levels showed further decrease on previous years, coinciding with the reduction in leaded petrol sales. Carbon monoxide monitoring in urban locations were well within World Health Organisation guidelines.
Concentrations of ground level ozone (a pollutant and indicator of smog whose occurrence in the lower atmosphere is separate the ozone layer depletion problem in the stratosphere) were again found to be low. This is due to relatively limited supply of precursor emissions and prevailing weather systems that do not give sufficient photochemical activity for ozone production in Ireland, or conditions that result in transport of ozone to other countries.
