Air quality
Welcome to Live air - our air quality web pages where you can find information on a host of air pollution issues together with live air quality data. On the air quality information page you can see a summary of current pollution levels together with links to graphs showing levels for the last seven days for four main air pollutants.
Good air quality is vital for our health and quality of life as well as the for environment. We also know that some pollution can have harmful effects particularly on vulnerable people such as the elderly and sick.
In the 1950s the major source of air pollution in our cities came from the burning of fossil fuels like coal which gave rise to the great smogs. This type of pollution significantly decreased after the introduction of clean air laws. The biggest problem we now face comes from road traffic emissions. Because most of the pollution is invisible, many people assume we don't have a problem. Air quality has improved significantly over the last fifteen years but we now face the problem of improvements in vehicle emissions being cancelled out by the increasing number of vehicles on our roads.
We hope the pages in this section help you to understand the issues surrounding air pollution and what we are doing about it in Liverpool.