[en] The United Kingdom environmental research into the mechanisms of the atmospheric transport and deposition of acidity, to understand the impacts of that acidity on soils, surface waters, forests, crops and the built environment and the consequences for fishery status, freshwater and soil ecosystems. The Critical Loads Approach opens the possibility of more subtle and sensitive ways of tackling the problems of environmental acidification on the European scale. The United Kingdom is contributing vigorously to the Critical Loads Approach through the mapping exercises, the environmental studies that underpin them and the understanding of the driving deposition mechanisms which lead both to pollutant removal and ecosystem contamination. Future progress with the UN ECE Convention on the Long Range Transport of Air Pollution and the revision of the NO_x, SO₂ and VOC protocols will rest in very large measure on the shared confidence within Europe in the knowledge of the underpinning environmental science. The Critical Loads Approach should provide an important policy focus within the international scientific community to set environmentally-based targets for future co-ordinated emission control programmes