Title: Report into an air pollution episode : sulphur dioxide, September 2nd 1998, Midlands and South Yorkshire
Author: Environment Agency Midlands Region
Document Type: Monograph
Annotation: EA additional title info: 02/09/1998
Abstract:
Improving air quality is one of the Government's Quality of Life Indicators and it forms part of its Strategy for a Healthier Nation. The National Air Quality Strategy seeks to build on the substantial improvements in air quality achieved over the last thirty years by addressing a wide range of different factors, ranging from traffic control measures to the reduction of industrial emissions. The Environment Agency, as regulator of most of the large industrial sources of air pollution, has an important part to play in this process. Also, as a body responsible for monitoring and reporting on the state of the environment at a regional scale, it is well qualified to look at air quality in a regional context. An aspect of this is to investigate major air quality episodes that, in the Midlands, are currently detected once per year on average. One such episode was in September 1998 when levels of sulphur dioxide exceeded Government guidelines across the Midlands and South Yorkshire under very unusual weather conditions. This report documents the eighteen-month investigation of this episode carried out
by the Midlands Region of the Environment Agency using innovative techniques and specialist staff. The Agency is uniquely placed as a national body to investigate incidents of this scale with the resources and expertise at its disposal. However, I wish to recognise that the detailed analysis would not have been possible without considerable help provided by the UK Meteorological Office. The conclusions demonstrate how emissions of sulphur dioxide from a range of large industrial processes regulated by the Agency can in particular weather conditions cause such widespread impacts and public complaint.
Publisher: Environment Agency
Publication Date: 1998
Publication Place: Solihull
Subject Keywords: Air pollution; Sulphur dioxide; Weather; Meteorological factors
Geographic Keywords: EA Midlands; EA Yorkshire and North East
Extent: 108
Permalink: http://www.environmentdata.org/archive/ealit:1307
Total file downloads: 263
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