Ozone pollution kills 75,000 Europeans a year, and costs €80bn

By Luc Powell

BRUSSELS, 21 Feb. - (ANA) - Europe is paying a heavy and avoidable price for ozone pollution.

According to recent modelling, an estimated 75,000 people died prematurely due to ozone exposure in the European Union in 2022.

Around 775,000 life-years were lost, and the combined economic damage from healthcare costs, crop losses and ecosystem degradation exceeded €80bn.

This is a persistent public health and environmental crisis affecting communities across the continent. And yet one of its main drivers, methane, remains largely absent from Europe’s air quality policy.

A new interactive map on methane emissions, ozone pollution and their impacts helps make this disconnect visible.

Produced for the Methane Matters Coalition, it illustrates how ozone’s harms — to health, agriculture and ecosystems — are distributed across the EU, and how closely these impacts are linked to methane emissions.

The picture that emerges is not one of isolated hotspots, but of a systemic problem that current policy fails to address.

The accompanying analysis provides a detailed overview of ozone’s impacts across the EU-27, with a closer look at six member states: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Denmark and Hungary.

It shows clearly how ozone pollution continues to damage human health, reduce crop yields and slow forest growth — and allows users to better understand how strongly these impacts are driven by methane emissions, using accessible and visual evidence. 

The health burden alone is severe.

Mediterranean EU states suffer most

Ozone exposure is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, increased hospital admissions and premature death across the EU. In southern member states such as Spain and Italy, where high temperatures and strong sunlight intensify ozone formation, the impacts are particularly severe.

Here, communities face higher mortality burdens and health costs than in many northern regions.

The environmental consequences are equally alarming.

Ozone pollution reduces wheat yields by billions of euros each year, directly affecting farmers and food supply chains already under pressure from climate extremes.

Forests, which play a crucial role in carbon storage and biodiversity protection, are also being weakened. The analysis estimates that ozone exposure has reduced forest biomass growth by nearly six percent across Europe, eroding ecosystem resilience at a critical time.

At the center of this problem lies methane.

Methane the main culprit

While methane is widely recognised as a potent greenhouse gas, its role as a key precursor to ground-level ozone garners little attention. The good news is that cutting methane emissions will not only benefit climate in the short-term, but it is also one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to reduce ozone pollution, bringing immediate gains for public health, agriculture and ecosystems while reducing the costs associated with these impacts.

Yet methane is not regulated under the National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD), and while total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU have fallen by a third since 1990, reducing emissions in the agriculture sector has been a slower process, and since 2005 agricultural methane emissions have largely stagnated.

This gap is now directly undermining progress on ozone reduction.

The European Commission’s recent review of the NECD confirms that existing legislation is insufficient to reduce ozone concentrations and that the lack of action on methane is limiting the EU’s ability to address ozone pollution effectively.

Local measures alone will not be enough.

Methane is a transboundary pollutant: emissions released in one country contribute to ozone formation and its impacts far beyond national borders. Without coordinated EU and international action, local efforts will continue to be undermined.

The report by Ricardo supports the case for embedding methane in international frameworks such as the Gothenburg Protocol (the UN’s equivalent to the EU’s NECD) and would deliver the combination of health, environmental and climate objectives that reducing methane emissions promises. 

The solutions are within reach.

Binding methane targets, integrated agricultural policies and coherent EU and international action could deliver rapid reductions in ozone precursors and therefore in ozone concentrations pollution.

By contrast, continued delay will lock in avoidable harm.

What is needed now is coherent regulation — not deregulation — to tackle methane and reduce ozone pollution. Treating methane as an afterthought in air quality policy is no longer a technical oversight but a political choice, with measurable consequences for citizens’ health, farmers’ livelihoods and environmental resilience.

If the EU is serious about protecting all three, methane can no longer remain the forgotten pollutant.   - (ANA) -

AB/ANA/21 February 2026 - - -