[Protective measures, tolerance margins and legislation]

Federal, cantonal and communal legislation in Switzerland suffers from incompleteness and other deficiencies in spite of a multitude of regulations concerning air management. The future legislation on environment will have to fill in the gaps as far as possible and to eliminate these deficiencies. The legislation in preparation will be based on a modern concept and should make it possible to act in a preventive way in environmental policy as well as in air management. The choice of the instruments to be used will be based not only on availability but in the first place on effectiveness and practical possibilities of execution. Priority is to be given to the reduction of emissions. In order to deal with the problems of air pollution, it has been suggested to classify these problems according to global, national:regional and local significance. As it is not possible to solve all problems in this field in a couple of years, we need to set priorities. These will have to be attributed not only according to the actual necessity for action but also according to the state of progress of current studies.