The Canary Islands will have a laboratory on haze and air quality

The Canary Islands will have an Air Quality Laboratory this year that will study aerosols and desert dust haze, according to the agreement signed between the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the regional government.

In a statement, the CSIC reported this Tuesday on this project that will require funding of 2.6 million euros and is expected to be operational by the end of 2023, in accordance with the agreement reached with the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Climate Change and Territorial Planning

The infrastructure for sample analysis will be located at the CSIC facilities in Tenerife, at the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA-CSIC), located in La Laguna, while the observation stations will be distributed at strategic points throughout the archipelago.

"Air quality has become a problem of global concern, as it affects health, ecosystems and the climate," the note highlights, adding that the future laboratory will allow us to know the origin and chemical composition of the particles that are breathed in the ambient air of the archipelago.

The scientific head of the Canary Islands Air Quality Laboratory and researcher at IPNA-CSIC, Sergio Rodríguez, explained that "we will quantify how much the emissions from automobiles, ships, industrial production and desert dust haze contribute to the levels of PM10 and PM2.5 particles in the ambient air of the Canary Islands".

In addition, we will determine how much of this pollution originates in the Canary Islands and how much comes from regions in the surrounding area, as desert dust haze comes mixed with pollutants (sulfate, organic aerosols and a cocktail of metals, among others) emitted by industry in North Africa, Rodríguez said.

Desert dust haze will be one of the main objects of study in the new laboratory, as the variability of the composition of desert dust and other aerosols that reach the Canary Islands will be studied.

The infrastructure will also have the capacity to analyze the aerosols emitted in future volcanic eruptions, giving a rapid response to air quality crises such as the one experienced in La Palma.

"The Canary Islands is the region of the European Union where the highest levels of suspended particles are reached, and this is not due to local pollution, hence the need to have this infrastructure," the scientist detailed.

He stated that climate variability and climate change are influencing the general circulation of the atmosphere and, therefore, the patterns and intensity of Saharan desert dust events.

In recent years, the Canary Islands has been affected by extreme atmospheric phenomena, in 2002, 2020, 2022 and February 2023, when extremely high concentrations of PM10 respirable particles have been reached, with daily average values ​​exceeding 1,800 micrograms/m3, concentrations well above the 45 micrograms/m3 that the WHO recommends as the maximum exposure limit.

Annually, ambient air pollution (outdoors) causes 300,000 deaths in Europe and four million deaths worldwide, mainly due to respiratory, cardiovascular and cancer conditions, and aerosols, or suspended particles, are the pollutant that causes the greatest number of deaths, the note states.