Air quality in Neath Port Talbot is improving despite public perception to the contrary, the local authority’s head of planning has said.

Last summer, people living close to the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot claimed black dust had never been so bad, leaving their homes, cars and pets filthy.

But Neath Port Talbot Council’s head of planning, Nicola Pearce, said the latest figures which covered 2018 showed air quality was generally improving in the county.

The 2019 annual air quality progress report, which details the results of pollution monitoring carried out during the calendar year of 2018, was discussed at a recent council meeting.

Officers said it showed that there were no breaches in air quality objectives for fine particles with a diameter of between 2.5 and 10 microns (PM10) in Port Talbot, which are mainly related to emissions from the steelworks.

There were also no exceedance of objectives for nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, lead or carbon monoxide, and fine particles of less than 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5) easily complied with EU targets.

However, 2018 was a relatively poor year for ozone pollution, being the first year since 2011 when the EU target value was breached.

It was also a poor year for nickel levels in Pontardawe with concentrations exceeding the EU target of 20 ng/m3 by 280% – the rise has been linked to problems with a specific abatement plant at the Wall Colmonoy plant, which officers said had since been resolved.

At a regeneration and sustainable development scrutiny committee meeting on October 18, the Sandfields East ward councillor Sean Pursey said more needed to be done about nuisance dust.

He said: “Nuisance dust plays heavily on people’s perception of air quality with it becoming the benchmark by which the public see improvement.

“They don’t see PM10s, they do see their cars, homes and pets getting dirty.

“In my area there has been a spike in nuisance dust recently with a lot more complaints being made.

“Good progress has been made when it comes to PM10s but it’s not being recognised because of the nuisance dust.”

He urged council officers to push Tata for improvement.

The highest rates of fallout of large particles, or nuisance dust, were measured in Port Talbot at Port Talbot Fire Station, Prince Street and Dyffryn School.

Officers said the school site experienced a significant increase during 2018, which could be related to the construction and demolition activities, which took place at that site.

They said fallout rates at the other two locations were broadly similar to the previous year.

In February, 2019, Tata Steel was  granted planning permission for a new extraction system which it said would cut dust emissions by 75%.

At the time planning officers said the new system would be tested during a period of around nine months.

During the council meeting earlier this month Cllr Nigel Hunt called for pollution monitoring to be more robust in particular for polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), saying the air quality objectives had been breached in Port Talbot for years.

He said: “The monitoring station for PAH is at the Port Talbot fire station in Taibach which is several miles from the source of the coke ovens at the steelworks.

“Is that the right location? It’s obviously going to be diluted over that two miles and it’s carcinogenic.”

He highlighted the high number of Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA) in Rhondda Cynon Taf and Newport, adding: “Are they taking things more seriously? I don’t feel they have more smog than us and yet we only have one AQMA and we’ve taken some monitoring stations away.”

In 2018 three continuous PM10 monitoring sites were discontinued – those in Talbot Road, Theodore Road and at Port Talbot Docks.

The 2018 annual average concentration of PAH was 0.69 ng/m3, almost three times the air quality objective of 0.25 ng/m3.

However, it has never exceeded the EU target value of 1 ng/m3.

Officers said Natural Resources Wales (NRW) regulated emissions from the steelworks and it was working with Tata to address the issue.

Mrs Pearce said the local authority had taken professional advice on the location of monitoring stations and the fire station was considered to be the best place for that particular one, taking into account the prevailing wind direction and proximity to homes.

She added: “Having only one AQMA is very good news – ideally you wouldn’t want any, we don’t want more. 

“If Rhondda has 16 then they have 16 problems whereas we have one which is in relation to PM10 levels.

“The reason why we’ve withdrawn some monitoring stations is because they were indicating very low particles and therefore we didn’t have to continue measuring or there were other monitoring stations in very close proximity which were providing very similar results.

“We do take pollution very seriously, this is a very detailed report – we have a number of small issues highlighted in the report, the picture is generally very positive.”

The Taibach Margam AQMA was declared by the local authority in 2000.