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World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines

The World Health Organization (WHO) global air quality guidelines are advisory and provide information to all countries on the levels at which health impacts are known to occur from air pollution. The updated WHO 2021 air quality guidelines (replacing WHO 2005) reflect human health impacts from PM and nitrogen dioxide at lower concentrations than found previously.

On LAWA, pollutants that are compared to the WHO 2021 guidelines include annual average PM10, annual and daily average PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide, daily average sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.

 Find out more about the WHO 2021 air quality guidelines and Air Quality monitoring in New Zealand.