The cause of air pollution in the city is largely due to both road transport and industry, and to a lesser extent, other processes that burn fossil fuels, such as commercial or domestic heating systems (for example gas boilers).
We have a statutory duty to manage local air quality in Sheffield under the Environment Act 1995.
We declared an Air Quality Management Area in March 2010 across the whole of the urban area of the city for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas and fine particulate matter (PM10) dust. This is because we didn't meet the standards set in the national Air Quality Strategy.
Our Air Quality Action Plan describes the actions that have been taken since 2010 to improve air quality and what more needs to be done. It aims to reduce pollution in Sheffield in order to achieve health-based national air quality objective and EU limit values by 2015.
Monitoring locations
This map shows the locations of active diffusion tubes, real time monitors, the Air Quality Management Area and the Clean Air Zone. By selecting a site, it gives the most recent verified pollution concentration observed at that location.
Locations with a green box around them are primary diffusion tube monitoring sites that meet the statutory criteria to benchmark the impact of our Local Clean Air Plan.
For older datasets and diffusion tube sites no longer in use, please select the archive layer on the map.
Under the UK Air Quality Regulations (2010), compliance for Clean Air Plans, including Clean Air Zones, is determined by annual average nitrogen dioxide concentrations inside the calendar year at valid monitoring locations. This is in accordance with the GOV.UK: Air Quality Standards Regulations 2010.