Choking on our own fumes

You only have to approach any of Spain's major cities by road to appreciate the scale of the country's airborne pollution. Most of the time, a grey-brown "beret" sits atop the skyline, only lifted for a few brief days when it rains. According to research last year by Spanish environmentalist group Ecologists in Action, 37 percent of Spaniards live in cities whose air-pollution levels exceed the European Union's limits. If the United Nations' recommended limits are applied, that figure rises to 87 percent.

There is nothing new here. Ecologists in Action's last five reports show a steady rise in air-pollution levels. But what is worrying is that academics and government officials alike are unsurprised by the figures and are all too aware of the problem and its causes.

By UN standards, 87 percent of Spaniards live in cities with excessive pollution

"The problem has made our cities impossible to live in and enjoy"

"I'm not surprised at all. The urban areas of the Madrid and Barcelona regions alone are home to eight million people - 17 percent of the total population of Spain - and traffic is a major contributor to air pollution," says José María Baldasano, a professor in environmental engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

"Traffic is the main producer of suspended particles, along with nitrous oxide," adds Mariano González, of Ecologists in Action.

This explains why Spain's dirtiest air is to be found in its cities, even though the crisis of the last three years has produced a decline. That's about the only positive thing that can be said about it," adds Paco Segura, a spokesman for Ecologists in Action. Traffic flows fell by 2.1 percent in 2010, and five percent and four percent in 2009 and 2008.

Teresa Ribera, secretary of state for climate change at the Environment Ministry, also points the finger of blame for Spain's poor air quality at cars - what she calls our "mono-dependence" on the motor vehicle. "Our dependence on cars has led to gridlock in our cities," she says.

But it isn't just our love affair with the car that has caused such problems, even if, as environmentalist Fernando Prieto points out, they contribute to as much as 80 percent of air pollution.

Baldasano says that "for political reasons, Spain continues to rely on coal-fired power stations." He adds that our dependence on the motor industry is also to blame. For example, he draws attention to the decision of the government to promote the use of diesel vehicles. They may produce less carbon dioxide, which is the main cause of global warming, but they also produce far greater amounts of airborne particles. "We have to find a balance," he says.

Ribera says that thanks to traffic noise and jams, along with increasingly poisonous air, Spain now faces a public-health problem. "Air pollution has a direct effect on allergies, on heart and lung disease, and has also made our cities impossible to live in and enjoy - the car also encourages a sedentary lifestyle," he concludes.

Segura agrees that this is now a public-health problem. According to Ecologists in Action, and based on information from the Environment Ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO), in Spain alone, some 20,000 people die each year from illnesses brought about or worsened by poor air quality. At a global level, that figure rises to 1.5 million.

Ribera, Segura and Prieto all agree that urgent action is needed to address the problem, and that the cost of reducing air pollution would translate into major savings for the health service. "Tackling the problem is not a cost, it is an investment," says Segura on the subject of the funds required to reduce automobile and factory emissions. "At a time when we are trying to reduce health spending to maintain the viability of our healthcare system, we have to take this factor into account," says Ribera.

Prieto sums up the question saying: "Action would be more than compensated for." This is no easy issue to address, admittedly. In the same way that measures to reduce smoking required - and continue to require - significant investment from the state, Ribera says that despite the political issues involved, we have to become much more conscious about the risks to our health from continuing to rely on motor vehicles.

But to do that has brought about - at last, some would say - a disagreement between environmental groups and our government. Environmentalists say that we have to be much more proactive in warning the public about the dangers. "Being told after the event that we now have ozone levels that are above the recommended levels; I want to be told before we get to that point," says Prieto. "And that is not what is happening," he adds.

Ribera is hoping that the issue will be tackled head on in the government's National Air Quality Plan, which is supposed to be presented before the elections in November. Prieto and his environmentalist colleagues are much more skeptical, and doubt whether there is now time for the plan to be put into action. "It needs to be made public through the media," says Ribera. "I don't know why we don't have information about air quality as part of the weather forecast," says Prieto.

This is no longer a problem that only affects the rich countries: according to the WHO, the two cities with the worst air quality are Ulan Bator and Antananarivo, the capitals of Mongolia and Madagascar, respectively. This classification of the world's dirtiest cities also highlights something else: measuring air quality is complex, and identifying the origin of it is central to identifying how far we are prepared to go in tackling it. The WHO's report limits itself to just one air pollutant. Ecologists in Action has limited itself in turn to simply gathering that information, but refuses to put together any kind of classification of which regions or which cities are the biggest offenders.

Even in the simplest measurement, that of just one compound, the results are less than convincing. For example, in the WHO's data, Zaragoza comes out badly, while Barcelona isn't even on the list. "That's because the information is from 2008," says Ribera, pointing out at the same time that Zaragoza has taken major steps in improving its public-transport system, which has seen its air-quality levels improve significantly. But Segura, from Ecologists in Action, says that Zaragoza's improvements are as much due to its City Hall having followed Madrid's lead in changing the location of its air-pollution measuring devices. As for Barcelona, it doesn't feature in the WHO's figures, because the UN body only takes data from cities that measure air pollution 75 percent of the year. Barcelona only measures its air pollution 50 percent of the time.

Nevertheless, EL PAÍS has tried to put together its own ranking. Data is essential to monitoring the problem, but it is not easy to obtain. From Ecologists in Action's report, one thing does emerge: in the case of 186 measuring devices, the legal ozone limit is being exceeded, along with other contaminants. And this is the case throughout Spain. In a bid to refine the study further, the paper has tried to put together a ranking based on the areas that each region is divided up into.

In total, Spain has 130 such divisions; 15 in Andalusia, while Rioja has just two. But in 27.8 percent of them, the maximum legal or recommended limit for at least one contaminant has been breached.

According to this basic classification, Andalusia is the worst offender, and Cantabria the cleanest. But other factors need to be taken into account. For example, that not all regions, areas, or measuring devices monitor the levels of the five compounds in the study. Furthermore, sometimes, being more scrupulous in measuring pollution levels gives a region a worse score; the very location of the measuring devices is also a factor.

At the same time, it should be remembered that collecting data is only the first step. The second is to inform the public about dangerous levels of air pollution. The third, and arguably the most difficult, is to take action. And this isn't just a matter for the government. "We all have to do our bit," says Ribera. Recent experience suggests that we, as car users, are unwilling to do that. "When air pollution levels shot up in Madrid in May, and the media reported it, there was virtually no reduction in motor-vehicle use," adds Ribera.

It will take some time for us to realize that we can all do our bit; but in the meantime, the government can still take action. "The problem is that the public sees any measures to reduce traffic as repressive. Nobody wants pollution, but nobody is prepared to leave their car at home," says Ribera. He says that larger areas of our cities need to be made inaccessible to cars, and policies introduced to encourage and facilitate the use of bikes as a means of getting to and from work, or around the city. "There is no excuse," says Prieto.

Ecologists in Action proposes more radical measures to bring down air-pollution levels - for example, by not building any more roads. But all agree that the problem is that "people see such measures as restrictive," says Ribera. He puts his finger on the problem by saying that air pollution is a problem that is getting steadily worse, "while we all believe that we are in too much of a hurry to take the time to walk somewhere or make use of public transport."