HEAL position: Beat Pollution – Prevent disease
European Commission Zero Pollution Action Plan
Our Executive Director’s speech on zero pollution at the EU Green Week 2021
HEAL analysis of the European Commission’s Zero Pollution Action Plan
| Firm preventive and remedial action | ⊗ |
| Urgently and drastically reduce the magnitude of environmental stressors on the entire population | ⊗ |
| Prioritisation of prevention and precaution | ⊗ |
| Prevent impacts of pollution in early life and at critical windows of development | ⊗⊗ |
| Tackle the complexity of pollution exposure, e.g. exposure to multiple stressors over a day and over a lifetime and impacts of pollution mixtures | ⊗ |
| Recognise the interlinkages between environmental, health and social inequalities and propose integrated measures | ⊗ |
| Measures to cut pollution at the source | ⊗ |
| Ending direct or indirect public financing of polluting processes | ⊗ |
| Full application of the polluter-pays-principle | ⊗ |
| Truly encourage polluting industries to switch to ‘do no harm’ processes | ⊗ |
| Short timeline to ban and phase-out toxic substances | ⊗ |
| Achieve good air quality outside and inside with no significant health harm by 2030: by swiftly proposing the full alignment of EU air standards with WHO guidelines and the latest science – with implementation by the next EU elections of 2024; by further cutting pollution at the source; and, by continuing to act on exceedances of air standards, and giving greater policy priority to healthy indoor environments | ⊗ |
| End chemical pollution in the air, water and soil by moving to 100% non-toxic material cycles by 2030 | ⊗ |
