A report from the European Environment Agency says that the target value on ozone in air pollution, which is set to protect human health, was exceeded in large parts of Europe last summer.

Levels of ground-level ozone were high in southern Europe with widespread exceedances of the information threshold value (180 µg/m3) laid down in the ozone directive (2002/3/EC). The frequency of exceedances of the information threshold was similar to earlier years, except for the summer 2003, which had a record number of exceedances.

The highest one-hour ozone concentration in summer 2005 (361µg/m3) was observed in Portugal. Other high hourly ozone concentrations between 360 and 300 µg/m3 were reported from Greece, Italy, France, Romania and Spain. The directive’s long-term objective to protect human health, an ozone concentration of 120 µg/m3 over 8 hours, was extensively exceeded in the EU and other European countries.

Air pollution by ozone in Europe in summer 2005 (Technical report No 3/2006), published at http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2006_3