2022 was the year in which the weather saved Madrid from not complying with European air quality regulations, according to the conclusions of the air quality report prepared by Ecologistas en Acción, showing slight progress in reducing some pollutants – carbon dioxide nitrogen (NO₂)― as the city council confirmed celebrated with great fanfare, but who also denounced a setback by others because he forgot to mention “airborne particles and ozone”. The organization warns that when the new legal framework comes into force in the same 2023, all stations in the capital except two in green zones and outside the central core, Casa de Campo and El Pardo, will again meet the maximum allowable NO₂ levels be exceeded. “There is a lot to be done so that Madrid can breathe healthy air,” warns Juan Bárcena, author of the report, who calls for traffic to be drastically reduced by around half.
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Bárcena explains that the level of NO₂, the most pollutant associated with transport, and 75% of these gases come from tailpipes, “remained in 2022 at the levels of 2020 and 2021, ie significantly lower than in the years before Pandemic. The difference is “very small”, but it makes it possible to save on the furniture. In the two previous years, one of the 24 stations, Plaza Elíptica, had exceeded the annual mean concentration limit set at 40 by one microgram per cubic meter of air (µg/m³). since Plaza Elíptica has reached this limit.
ECOLOGISTS IN ACTION
“In the face of the joy, the complacency and the wrong message from the city council, it has to be said that while we didn’t hurt for the first time, we stayed right on the limit and nobody guarantees that this year it will happen again,” he points out , Air Quality Coordinator of Ecologistas. Especially if the factor that most determined the drop was favorable weather for the spread of gases. The Madrid beret is formed during prolonged anticyclonic weather because when the air tends to stabilize this ultimately leads to the phenomenon of thermal inversion, i.e. the higher you go the less cold it is in contrast to normal. Thus, instead of rising, the cold air and pollutant particles remain trapped in the low areas, and since the atmosphere is stable, the pollutants are trapped near the emission sources. This beret only disappears with rain, however little, wind or reduction of emissions.
“The two months in which high pressure areas are usually recorded, November and December, were very wet with 18 and 15 rainy days,” explains Bárcena. “There was no prolonged high-pressure period with thermal inversion in the last quarter,” the report added. The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) confirms this point, although it clarifies it. His delegate in Madrid, Miguel Ángel Pelacho, specifies that for the beret to form, in addition to at least two or three days of anticyclonic situation, it is necessary that the wind hardly moves. If so, even if there are high pressures, “the thermal inversion is broken”.
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“October saw many high pressure situations but without a sustained and intense reversal from the low levels. It also happened a few days in November and the last week of December. Only on one day at the end of November was there persistent and intensive investment”, the delegate specifies. Although Aemet alerted the city council about 10 times that the conditions for the production of the beret could be created, it ultimately only happened once. “The favorable weather has had a very important impact, especially in December,” says Pelacho, who also cites less traffic and fewer emissions from cars.
In addition to underscoring the cloak that meteorology has thrown at José Luis Martínez Almeida, Bárcena recalls that “compliance comes very late” because it occurs when “the framework is outdated” and in the process of moving towards more stringent reference values : the recommended limit of the WHO is already 10 µg/m³ and the European one will be 20 µg/m³ in 2023. “Madrid will double the new EU limits this year,” warns the spokesman.
ECOLOGISTS IN ACTION
And the bad news: Compared to the meager improvement in NO₂, the data for 2022 indicates that the situation for other pollutants has “significantly worsened”. Regarding aerosols that can get into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, Bárcena clarifies that Madrid “complies with the outdated applicable legal limits” for PM₁₀ – particles smaller than 10 microns in diameter and “more harmful” than NO₂― , but more stations than last year – eight of the 13 observatories they measure – and the network mean exceeded the annual maximum proposed for future European legislation (20 µg/m³). In addition, they all exceeded the WHO limit (15 µg/m³).
“Possibly this deterioration, which brings us back to 2015 levels, has to do with an apparent increase in air inflows from the Sahara,” says Bárcena. At PM₂.₅ ―less than 2.5 microns― the situation is “similar” to 2021: one of the eight stations they register, Plaza Elíptica, has the annual limit value in the future European framework (10 µg/m³) and all far above that of the WHO (5 µg/m³).
The situation has not improved with regard to tropospheric ozone (O₃), also known as bad ozone. In 2022, three of the twelve stations that take it into account will have exceeded the legally permitted eight-hour target value (120 µg/m³) more than 25 times. In addition, five exceedances of the information threshold for the public (180 µg/m³ for one hour) were recorded when no warning had been issued in the previous two years. According to ecologists, the rise in ozone pollution peaks was “undoubtedly linked to the strong waves of summer heat”.
ECOLOGISTS IN ACTION
Faced with this situation, Ecologists claims to cut traffic “by half the sack.” “It is being done in the rest of the major European cities that have been condemned before Spain and have given an important response. London has introduced an ultra-low-emissions zone, Paris the 15-minute city, and in Amsterdam thousands of parking spaces have been axed, while in Madrid the city council has eased conditions in central Madrid and opened two large 1,800-seat car parks in the Bernabéu plans and 800 in the Niño Jesús,” Barcena laments.
For Madrid to stop being a cochista, “it is necessary to make Madrid Central more restrictive and widen, to carry out a reduction in lanes in 18 main axes, as has already been done with the Gran Vía and as envisaged in the Madrid air quality plan or plan A that will not be taken away”. It is also necessary to “recreate Central Madrid by Districts and adapt it to the needs”, to reduce the parking spaces for the car and to stop the access of vehicles to the capital.
According to the latest available urban study with data from 2017, 43.5% of the vehicles circulating through the city enter Madrid daily from the periphery. Ecologistas proposes cleaning up the Cercanías network, using HOV buses at all access points (but without widening the road) and introducing an entry fee, as already done in London, Stockholm, Milan… And finally, “really and decisively bet on it on bike paths”. “Madrid is light years away from any European capital, but also from Barcelona, Seville and Valencia,” criticizes Bárcena.
The cost of life and income of pollution
In their report, Ecologists cite the Institute for Global Health, which estimates that 3,700 deaths a year in the capital could be avoided — 2,010 from NO₂ and 1,693 from PM₂,₅ — if pollution were drastically reduced. Julio Díaz, PhD in Physics and research professor at the Carlos III Health Institute, distinguishes between short-term effects that lead to emergency room admissions and long-term effects that lead to lung cancer and worsening of chronic diseases.
The short-term limit of 24 hours does not exist in current European legislation, which only takes into account the long-term one, which Madrid has respected. “The fact that it adjusts to annual values does not mean that there are no peaks that have a significant impact on health, because it is well above what the WHO specifies and because the effect of NO₂ is linear and has no safety threshold. It works at 39, at 38 and at 20,” he recalls. In the short term, his body credits this pollutant with 8,200 annual revenues, mainly for respiratory diseases between 2003 and 2018, which have cost the health 120 million euros annually. With data from 2000 to 2009, it claims 1,100 lives a year. “The air in Madrid cannot be breathed, neither in 2021 nor in 2022,” says the expert. PM₁₀ causes 280 deaths per year.
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