Ecology, EU – Baltic States, Industry, Lithuania
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Saturday, 27.04.2024, 02:24
Lithuania among best EU states in terms of compliance with AAQ directive
Nevertheless,
Lithuania still exceeds the EU average in terms of lost years of healthy life,
according to a report by the European Court of Auditors.
The report
names Lithuania, its Baltic neighbors of Latvia and Estonia as well as Ireland
and Cyprus as EU states where levels of particulate matter (PM), NO2
and SO2 did not exceed the limit values defined in the directives.
«All 28 EU
Member States except Estonia, Ireland, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta were
in breach of one or more of these limit values», the report concludes.
It also
states that Lithuania joins countries with poor air quality, like India and
China, in terms of lost years of healthy life and scores 1.5 lost years of
healthy life from ambient air pollution per hundred inhabitants.
The worst
situation in the EU is in Bulgaria (2.5 years), the Czech Republic and Latvia
(almost 2 years).
The
European Court of Auditors concluded that «despite the existence of technically
and economically viable measures such as agronomic, livestock or energy
measures, they have yet to be adopted at the scale and intensity necessary to
deliver significant emission reductions».
According
to the report, air pollution causes more than 400,000 premature deaths in the
EU each year.