§ Mr. LidingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many days of poor urban air quality there have been in each year since 1993. [88437]
§ Margaret BeckettThe United Kingdom Government and the devolved administrations monitor levels of a number of pollutants through a national network of air quality monitoring sites. The monitoring network has538W undergone a large expansion from 24 urban sites in 1993 to 100 in 2002. Air quality monitoring data and statistics are published on the National Air Quality Information Archive website www.airquality.co.uk.
Number of days with poor urban air quality Number of urban monitoring sites in operation 1993 99 24 1994 73 30 1995 51 31 1996 60 51 1997 64 79 1998 51 84 1999 52 84 2000 38 86 2001 61 97 2002 29 100 The increase in the number of days with poor air quality in 2001 compared with the previous three years is partly due to the larger number of measurement sites in use in 2001 and partly due to the natural fluctuations in weather conditions leading to very localised high concentrations. The overall trend over the whole period from 1993 is downward.