The aging of asphalt binder is one of the main causes for asphalt pavement failure, which is why realistic laboratory aging methods are crucial to ensure long-time durability. However, certain aging-inducing environmental factors, e.g. humidity, solar radiation and reactive oxygen species (ROS), are disregarded by current standardized aging methods. Especially, the interaction of the binder with nitrogen oxides (NOx) or ozone (O3) is mainly unexplored. This study focusses on the reactivity of individual ROS (NO, NO2, O3) in regards to the long-term aging (LTA) of three unmodified binder. The LTA is performed with an adapted version of the Viennese Binder Aging (VBA) method and Fourier-Transform-Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and the Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) are used for analysis. The results show, that NO as the only oxygen source present did not induce aging, but NO2 caused significant aging to occur. The impact of NO2 was especially strong in combination with another oxygen source, whereby NO2 is believed to work as an oxidation accelerator. The effect of O3 was less severe, causing no additional aging for two investigated binder. This study proves the crucial impact of ROS on asphalt binder aging and the importance of incorporating them in laboratory aging simulations.