Air pollution may be largely invisible; however, pollutant gases and particulates can harm human health and the environment.
While aircraft operations are a major source of air pollution within airports (with the highest emissions being released on-stand power, taxiing, and take-off), ground support equipment, surface access road transport, and airport on-site energy generation also have an impact on air quality. For the aviation industry, the pollutants of most concern are small particulate matter (PM) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX), in particular nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This is because they are associated with combustion activities from motor vehicles and aircrafts.
Every three years we commission six-month air quality monitoring surveys to assesses the impact on air quality from aircraft and vehicle emissions from the airport and surrounding area. These studies assessed the NO2 concentrations using diffusion tubes. Single diffusion tube samplers for NO2 are exposed at approximately monthly intervals at selected airside and non-airside locations. The locations were chosen to reflect a variety of potential NO2 concentration-situations, including local sources and more general background areas around Edinburgh Airport. For the 2023 study, we have also introduced monitoring of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) concentrations, using two AQMesh sensors, placed both airside and landside.
The most recent study shows a general trend of decreasing NO2 concentrations, in line with monitoring sites in the city of Edinburgh. The study concluded that the objective targets (no more than 18 exceedances in a year of 200 μg m-3) were not likely to have been breached at any of the monitoring locations. PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations, recorded by the AQMesh instruments were also lower than the annual mean targets
For more information please download our Air Quality Reports below