Background

The first air pollution measurements in the Clermont-Ferrand metropolitan area were made by the Clermont-Ferrand Municipal Laboratory during 1966-1967. At the time, a few hundred analyses were made each year, gradually increasing to a few thousand by the beginning of the seventies. By the end of the eighties, the network had been equipped with semiautomatic and then fully automatic measuring equipment. At this stage measurements only concerned strong acidity, black smoke and carbon monoxide, the latter being sampled daily at ground level at about two p.m. at the ten road junctions in the Clermont-Ferrand metropolitan area with the heaviest traffic flow.

In 1986, a network management association, the Association for the Measurement of Air Pollution in the Clermont-Ferrand Metropolitan Area (AMPAC), grouping three partner categories (State, Local and Industrial Authorities), was set up and approved as part of the French air pollution charge. The Presidency was offered to an elected official from Clermont-Ferrand, the Treasury to a representative of the industrial sector while the Regional Directorate of Industry and Research (DRIR) took on the role of General Secretariat. The Municipal Laboratory continued to run the network during the first phase of its existence. It was decided to extend the association to a regional level in 1989.

The AMPAC took on a new dimension with the recruitment of the first dedicated association staff and the arrival of equipment with much higher measuring efficiency enabling the association to differentiate between pollutant molecules. The French law dated 30 December 1996 on Air and the Rational Use of Energy boosted this on-going effort to modernize, regionalize and automate the monitoring of air quality.

AMPAC changed its name to "Atmo Auvergne" (Association for the Measurement of Air Pollution in Auvergne) in 1999 in order to assert its regional nature and its membership of a national air quality information and monitoring network.