Coatings World - June 2017

Europe

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Mounting anxieties about poor air quality are beginning to overshadow the concerns related to the dangers of global warming.

Pollution Concerns Drive Market
for Air-Cleaning Coatings

by Sean Milmo European Correspondent milmocw@rodmanmedia.com

Rising concerns about air pollution in Europe are accelerating a swing among the region’s consumers to favoring coatings which help provide cleaner air.

Combatting climate change through reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) remains a matter of primary importance in Europe. But mounting anxieties about poor air quality are beginning to overshadow concerns related to the dangers of global warming.

Coatings which promote lower levels of CO2 and other global warming gases tend also to help keep the air clean. As a result these coatings are seen as having a two-pronged advantage.

Politicians and NGOs in Europe have been
pressing for decreases in CO2 emissions and
in air pollutants to be given an equal priority.

”There is little doubt that terrible levels of air pollution being suffered by people in many countries and cities around the world is finally pushing this issue up the political agenda,” said James Thornton, chief executive of ClientEarth, London, an international environmental lawyers group. “This is a very real public health emergency. It is simply not acceptable that pollution is not being tackled as a major health issue. If the water we drink was causing so many early deaths, we’d take immediate and urgent steps. The same should happen for the air we breathe.”

While CO2 levels have been falling in the region, air pollution figures in some of Europe’s major cities have been worsening due mainly to contaminants from automobile and truck fuels and from industrial plants.