These web pages have been developed by Envitech Europe, under contract to North Lincolnshire Council. Any reproduction for commercial use of maps, graphics, reports, files and text contained herein may be subject to copyright, and requests for such use should be directed to Environmental.Health@northlincs.gov.uk for consideration. Any data downloaded from these pages are freely available for public use, with acknowledgement of this web site as the source.

The data published on this website include air pollution measurements at a range of different locations; some are at the roadside, others are at background locations, some are positioned near industrial operations or are in rural areas. There are clearly important exposure issues and potential health effects at roadside and industrial sites.

It should be noted that while the measurements at each site are made on a comparable basis and are factually correct, it would not be scientifically sound to make simplistic conclusions based on them to derive a ranking order indicating which parts of North Lincolnshire (or the rest of the UK) are most polluted.

Such simple rankings may be misleading for a number of reasons, including:

• The results from single measurement points would need to be supplemented by modelling to fully describe the overall levels and resulting population exposure in a given area.
• Pollution may be 'High' on a particular day, but this does not mean air pollution is 'bad' in general, as within the Objectives many pollutants are allowed a certain number of 'high' periods for a particular year.
• The data used for the air pollution summary is provisional and subject to quality assurance and control procedures before being ratified. Therefore data shown in subsequent reports may vary compared to that initially shown on the website.
• Background stations generally represent overall city-wide exposure more closely than roadside sites.
• Defra's network of monitoring sites does not cover all cities in the UK.