UK: pollution days by site and pollutant 2023

In 2023, the average number of days when levels of ozone were moderate or higher at rural monitoring sites in the United Kingdom was 18.7. By comparison, ozone caused on average 14 days of moderate or higher pollution at urban locations. On average, there were 8.7 moderate or higher air pollution days in the UK at urban sites in 2023, and 20 at rural sites.

Average number of moderate or higher air pollution days in rural and urban sites in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2023, by pollutant

Characteristic	Rural sites	Urban sites
O3	18.7	14.3
NO2	0	0
SO2	0	0.5
PM10	0.4	1.3
PM2.5	0.8	0.6

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Release date

April 2024

More information

Region

United Kingdom

Survey time period

2023

Supplementary notes

*O3 = Ozone, NO2 = Nitrogen Dioxide, SO2 = sulfur dioxide, PM10 = particulate matter 10 micrometers or less in diameter, PM2.5 = particulate matter 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter.

Not every site in the automatic monitoring network is included. Sites must also meet certain data capture targets to be used in the index. Urban sites are required to monitor PM10 and rural sites are required to monitor ozone. For the required pollutants data capture should be more than or equal to 75% of the year.For ozone this applies to both the full year and the summer period in isolation.
This statistic is using original data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and includes copyright material from © Crown, licensed under the Open Government License v3.0

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