Ireland's performance in the air pollution league table is better than some of its European neighbours, but as the latest readings for 2016, published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show, there’s no cause for complacency.
It continues to be the cause of an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 deaths here each year, and the EPA says levels are moving in the wrong direction, with emissions of three of the main air pollutants — ammonia, nitrogen oxides, and non-methane volatile organic compounds — above normal EU emission levels in 2016.
Readings exceed World Health Organisation air quality guidelines. It isn’t encouraging news in a country that has the world’s fourth-highest prevalence of asthma.
Geography and specific sets of climatic conditions — or weather events, as we must now call them — such as cold, windless nights, can in some areas contribute to abnormally high readings.
Pollution in New Ross, Co Wexford, on one evening last December were worse than those taken in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics.
The wider picture, however, is one of competing interests and requirements.
Burning solid fuels such as coal and peat causes pollution, but how are people to heat their homes in areas in which natural gas isn’t available?
We applaud the expansion in recent years of dairy and beef production, while worrying about ammonia emissions, almost all of which come from the application of the fertilisers needed by farmers.
That’s why the agricultural lobby argued for and won a further derogation from the EU’s nitrates directive, the laudable aim of which is to protect air and water quality from the excessive use of artificial nitrogen.
No room for complacency, but a need to accept that solving the pollution problem has costs.