The World Health Organization (WHO) has postponed the publication of new guidelines on tougher limits for air pollution, 91av has learned.
The recommendations are expected to be highly influential in how countries around the world act to clean up dirty air, a public health crisis that kills millions of people annually. Campaigners say the delay is troubling and risks pushing back strong action on air pollution.
The WHO’s current limits on air quality, first set in 2005, are considered the gold standard internationally. Governments, including the UK’s, .
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Recently, experts have been helping the WHO flesh out new, lower limits for pollutants including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and tiny particulates known as PM2.5 and PM10, reflecting a wave of research documenting the harm to human health from exposure to even low levels of air pollution. A review of the limits was .
In a virtual meeting on 4 May, a WHO official said that a report on the new guidelines, which have been highly anticipated by campaigners, public health officials and local authorities, would be published in June or July.
However, a source close to the process has confirmed to 91av that the report will now be delayed until September at the earliest. They said that the postponement was due to administrative reasons, rather than disagreements over the precise limits that should be set.
“This last-minute delay, if formally confirmed, would be troubling, because the WHO’s new air quality guidelines are expected to be significantly lower and highlight the urgent need to reduce air pollution,” says Simon Birkett at the charity Clean Air London.
He adds: “We lose three of the five months left until COP26 [the UN climate summit in November] to get climate negotiators to understand that about 80 per cent of the sources of local air pollution and greenhouse gases are the same.”
The shift in timing will also delay updates of new protections, including the European Union’s review of the Ambient Air Quality Directive and the British Standards Institute’s new indoor air standards for buildings, says Birkett.
A WHO spokesperson didn’t confirm or dispute the delay, saying only that the guidelines are due to be launched in the third quarter of 2021.
“The air quality guidelines are a detailed normative document providing evidence-based recommendations that can influence policy decisions to protect human health from air pollution. It has thus taken a substantial amount of time to gather and review the vast body of evidence, and to ensure that it is presented accurately whilst also being published in a timely manner,” says the spokesperson.
News of the delay comes on the eve of on 17 June. This is also the deadline for the UK government to respond to a coroner’s report on 21 April that called on the UK to adopt existing WHO air quality guidelines, following his finding that the death of a 9-year old girl in London, Ella Kissi-Debrah, was linked to air pollution.
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