Evaluatie van de verzuringsdoelstellingen: de onderbouwing

The Third National Environmental Policy Plan announced an evaluation of the acidification policy goals for The Netherlands. This reports presents the scientific building blocks for this evaluation. An overview is given of the emission trends and the environmental quality since 1980 with an outlook up to the year 2010. Besides an assessment has been made of the state of the art on: *) the transport and depostion of acidifying compounds and the formation of ozone and particulate matter (PM10); the effects of transboundary air pollution on the health of human and the damage to plants and materials; *) the effects on the composition of species within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and on soil and ground water quality. The main findings are: *) the most recent scientific findings do not differ significantly from the critical loads and levels as they were when the goals were defined; *) the NOx and NH3 emission goals for the year 2010 require very large efforts, as is also the case for the depositon goals for 2010; *) the emission reduction of the last decades has enlarged the importance of some aspects that until recently could be neglected