Air pollution - Why care? (Finland)

The concentrations of most air pollutants are low in Finland. For example, the occurrences of values over the limit, threshold and target concentrations set by EU are very rare. However, air pollution still is a potential threat. The background concentration of ozone is high, even in the remote northern parts of the country. In urban areas, including minor towns, local concentrations of particulate matter (PM) may persist at highly elevated levels for weeks during the so-called springtime dust period; small-scale wood combustion increases wintertime concentrations of benzo(a)pyrene in residential areas; episodic transboundary pollution from wildfires may cause high PM concentrations over large areas, potentially enriched with carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[1]