‘Traffic is a bigger polluter than industry’

Both industry and automobiles have become cleaner over the last 10 years, however, this gain has been wiped out by an increase in the number of cars on Belgian roads.
According to a government report, cars — and in particular the diesel engine cars which are widespread in corporate car fleets — have now become the number one source of carcinogenic fine particle pollution.
The newspaper publishes a map of Europe, which shows that levels of nitrogen oxides — a.k.a. greenhouse gasses — are particularly high in Begium, the Netherlands, the area around Paris and northern Italy.