Even playing outside on a nice day is not possible, says Noëlle’s mother. “If she wants to go outside, we first smell if it smells normal. For example, if people are barbecuing, we stay inside and close everything.” Naisheline has now received an urgent statement for a new home, but one within the Rotterdam region. “That feels a bit like rain in a drip,” she says.
Noëlle is not the only one with problems; in the Netherlands there are thousands of children with asthma, and thousands more with vulnerable lungs, says Ismé de Kleer, pediatric lung specialist at the Franciscus Gasthuis in Rotterdam.
“The effects of air pollution are more insidious than you think,” says De Kleer. Thus, the harmful effects can occur even before birth. “Mothers can inhale particulate matter, which can enter the bloodstream and end up in the fetus.” In 1 in 5 children with asthma, the cause is known to be related to nitrogen dioxide, the pulmonologist says.
Air is too bad throughout the Netherlands
De Kleer says that air pollution is not only a problem in Rotterdam and other large cities. “There are certainly differences within the Netherlands, but the air in the whole of the Netherlands is actually too bad.” This can be seen, for example, in the EU standards for clean air, which are not met in the Netherlands, says De Kleer. “And the World Health Organization standards are at least twice as low as the EU standards.”
But how should that be, clean air throughout the Netherlands? According to De Kleer, the issue is related to many other social problems, such as climate change, nitrogen problems and energy transition. As it emerged from one research last month that wood stoves and fireplaces are much more polluting than previously assumed: wood burning in the Netherlands is the cause of 23 percent of particulate matter emissions.
The complexity of the issue calls for a special envoy, the coalition thinks. “We want that envoy to include air quality and health in all discussions on those subjects.”
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