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The ERS Environment and Health Committee are continually working towards the objectives of the policy and activities, to advocate for environmental health, to promote clean air and protect human health. All activities are recorded, see the latest updates.
31 October, 2023
In a new position statement, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the European Lung Foundation (ELF) have urged EU environment ministers to prioritise health and follow the science on health effects of air pollution, as the EU Environment Council prepares to adopt its position on the revision of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD).
19 October, 2023
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) and several other health-focused organisations have signed a joint letter to EU environment ministers calling for clean air to prevent disease and save lives, ahead of the EU Environment Council vote on the revision of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD).
13 September, 2023
The vote by the European Parliament to strengthen the legally binding limit values for air quality is an important step in the right direction toward clean air for all, even though the full alignment with World Health Organization was moved from 2030 to 2035. As we prepare for the negotiations with the Council, this is great news for all European citizens, especially the millions who live with lung conditions such as asthma and COPD.
12 September, 2023
The European Cancer Organisation (ECO) and the European Respiratory Society (ERS) strongly support the text as voted by Environment Committee (Lopez Report) in June 2023, and urge MEPs to vote in favour of the Lopez Report. This is a unique opportunity to prevent cancer in line with Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.
4 September, 2023
In a new position statement, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) has outlined climate change occurrences which cause clear and major threats to respiratory patients worldwide, and has called for health to be central to the development of climate change mitigation strategies and air pollution reduction policies.
ERS urges support from the professional respiratory community to advocate for the protection of our planet and for the health of people that live and depend on it.
On 16 December the European Respiratory society (ERS) together with the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) shared a joint letter urging the European Union to align the newly proposed limit values with the WHO 2021 Air Quality Guidelines by 2030. Among other things, the organisations call for limit values of 5 and 10 µg/m3 for annual PM2.5 and NO2 (respectively) and to add a limit value for the long-term ozone concentration.
Read the letter in full.
On 9 March, 2022, members of this group, along with members of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, released a statement calling for the EU Ambient Air Quality Directives to be revised in light of updates to the health information in the impact assessment.
Read the statement in full
To estimate the potential benefit of air pollutant reductions adequately, health impact assessment (HIA) and cost-benefit analyses (CBA) need to include the latest and most relevant information on the relationships between air pollutants and health outcomes. Read this ERS and ISEE recommendation for inclusion of sensitivity analyses in the HIA and CBA.