WHO Collaborating Centre for Air Quality Management

Schild des WHO CC Air Quality Management and Air Pollution Control — **WHO CC Air Quality Management and Air Pollution Control**
Source: Catrin Zigelski / UBA

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Air Quality Management and Air Pollution Control (WHO CC) provides the WHO Regional Office for Europe with scientific advice and support in the field of health impact assessment of ambient and indoor air pollution, and climate change.

The WHO CC contributes to developing and encouraging collaboration, interaction and networking within the WHO programme "Air Quality and Health". Since the political changes in Europe in the early 1990s, the WHO CC has increasingly involved Member States in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia in the programme.

WHO CC’s cooperation with WHO EURO in Copenhagen is organised through the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health (WHO ECEH), which from 1991 to 2000 was located in the Netherlands, and since 2001 has been based in Bonn, with the financial and logistical support of the German Ministry for the Environment.

The WHO CC serves as the "switchboard" for national and international panels and institutions of all 53 WHO European Member States, in particular to provide advice and undertake studies, to review and assess periodically the latest research findings, to prepare and publish reports on specific topics, and to organise the exchange of information, training courses and workshops. To improve the exchange of information the WHO CC publishes articles on current projects, programmes and studies in its biannual ‘Newsletter’, while the ‘Air Hygiene Report’ series has been established to report in depth on specific investigations. The WHO CC makes these publications and other up-to-date information available at its English-language website.

In 2006 the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt - UBA) looked back on 20 years of successful co-operation with the WHO. In 1986, the WHO Regional Office for Europe designated the Institute for Water, Soil and Air Hygiene (WaBoLu) as WHO Collaborating Centre for Air Quality Management and Air Pollution Control (WHO CC), due to its long-standing scientific and research expertise in assessing the health impacts of air pollution. The dynamic co-operation that developed in those first years was continued when the WaBoLu became part of the Federal Environment Agency in 1994. Since 1999 the WHO CC belongs to the Agency’s ‘Environmental Hygiene’ department, located in Berlin.