Merton Air Quality Annual Status Report for 2020

Merton Council fails their air quality objectives.

Merton Council undertakes non-automatic monitoring of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) using diffusion tubes, this provides a comprehensive coverage of all known hotspots including some main roads and town centres throughout the borough.

In 2020 Merton operated two automatic air quality monitoring sites and a diffusion tube network covering 50 locations around the borough. The latest monitoring results for 2020 are heavily influenced by COVID-19. The diffusion tube data provides a detailed local picture of the impact that ‘lockdown’ had on localised pollution in the borough when vehicle movement was restriction. Air pollution in the London Borough of Merton still exceeds the Government Air Quality objectives, and therefore there is still a need for Merton to be designated as an AQMA and to pursue improvements in air quality.

Notes:
The annual mean concentrations are presented as μg/m3.
Exceedances of the NO2 annual mean AQO of 40μg/m3 are shown in red.