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Domestic air quality legislation

This page provides a brief summary of relevant domestic UK and Scottish legislation with links to the text of the appropriate document, where it is available.

• The Air Quality Standards Regulations 1989 
  Implements EU Directives 80/779/EEC ,  82/884/EEC  and 85/203/EEC  on air quality limit values and guide values for sulphur dioxide, suspended particulates, lead and nitrogen dioxide.
  
  
• Environmental Protection Act 1990 
  Established the IPC and LAPC frameworks for control of emissions from regulated processes.
  
  
• Clean Air Act 1993 
  Consolidated earlier clean air and other acts to provide a consistent framework to prescribe emissions to atmosphere of dark smoke, fumes, grit and dust. Established the concept of smoke control areas.
  
  
• Environment Act 1995 
  Established SEPA and assigned duties to protect and improve air quality, including the Air Quality Strategy and the Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) regime.
  
  
• Air Quality (Scotland) Regulations 2000. Scottish Statutory Instrument No. 97 
  Sets the timescale for local authorities to review, assess and meet objectives for air quality. [Note this SSI is not identical in terms of pollutant measurement timescales and objectives to SI No. 3043 (1997)].
  
  
• The Air Quality Limit Values (Scotland) Regulations 2001. Scottish Statutory Instrument No. 224 
  Transposes Council Directives 1996/62/EC “The Framework Directive”  and 99/30/EC “The First Daughter Directive”  setting air quality limit values for SO_², NO_², PM_¹⁰ and lead. Also included are reference methods, the assessment scheme and a requirement to establish a PM_^2.5 network.
  
  
• The Air Quality (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2002. Scottish Statutory Instrument No. 297 
  Amends SSI No.97 (2000) regulations by making the objective for CO more stringent, in line with 2000/69/EC “The Second Daughter Directive” , and introduces supplementary long-term objectives for benzene and PM_¹⁰.
  
  
• The Air Quality Limit Values (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2002. Scottish Statutory Instrument No. 556 
  Transposed The Second Daughter Directive (see above) into Scottish law by amending SSI No. 224 (2001) to include limit values for CO and benzene. The amendment also includes further clarifications and simplifications to this SSI.
  
  
• The Air Quality Standards (Scotland) Regulations 2007. Scottish Statutory Instrument No. 182 
  The regulations transpose Directive 2004/107/EC “The Fourth Daughter Directive”  (164k) relating to target levels in ambient air for nickel, arsenic, cadmium and mercury as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). The SSI also introduces detailed requirements for monitoring of PM_^2.5 and a suite of tropospheric ozone precursors. Previous legislation is revoked (SSIs 428 (2003), 547 (2003) and 300 (2005). Also stipulated is minimum geographical coverage for monitoring and requirements for dissemination of information to the public.