The Air Pays-de-la-Loire association has just published its results for the year 2021. Air quality is homogeneous throughout the region and stable compared to 2020 : downstream, “we had 82% of the days of the year with average air quality and 15% of the time with degraded air quality“, underlines Charlotte Delpeux, engineer within Air Pays-de-la-Loire. “There are very few days with very good quality and very few days with very poor quality, so the extremes are not very present”, she adds.
A more accurate air quality index
On January 1, 2021, a new air quality index, established by the Ministry in charge of ecology, came into force. Measurements are now more accurate. “Air quality has not necessarily changed between 2020 and 2021, but the way we talk about it has evolved. So the results are worse than in previous years”, explains Charlotte Delpeux of Air Pays-de-la-Loire. With the old index, the air was considered to be of good quality 90% of the days of the year in 2020. At first glance, therefore, the figures for 2021 seem to have deteriorated, but in fact these are just the “knowledge of the health effects of pollution” on the health of citizens who have evolved.
“VSwhat was considered good before, today it is considered average because there can be health effects from small levels of air breathed each day“, explains the engineer of the association.