Air pollution negatively affects almost every organ in the body and around 30,000 UK deaths will be linked to toxic air in 2025, according to a new report from leading doctors. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said that there is “no safe level” of air pollutants as it warned that around 99% of the UK population are breathing in “toxic air”.
Exposure to air pollution can shorten people’s lives by 1.8 years, which is “just behind some of the leading causes of death and disease worldwide”, including cancer and smoking, the authors wrote. The report highlights some new research findings about air pollution and ill health over the last decade, including that even if low concentrations air pollution can have impacts on foetal development, cancer, heart disease, stroke, mental health conditions and dementia.
The report also highlights how air pollution is estimated to have an economic cost of £27 billion a year in healthcare costs and productivity losses. This figure would be significantly higher – up to £50 billion – if wider impacts such as dementia are taken into account.
The College has called for ambitious action form Government to tackle the issue, as it urged ministers to “recognise air pollution as a key public health issue”. In the forward of the report, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, said: “Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, with impacts throughout the life course.
“It is an area of health where the UK has made substantial progress in the last three decades with concentrations of many of the main pollutants falling rapidly, but it remains a major cause of chronic ill health as well as premature mortality. “Further progress in outdoor air pollution will occur if we decide to make it, but will not happen without practical and achievable changes to heating, transport and industry in particular.
“Air pollution affects everybody, and is everybody’s business.”
Dr Mumtaz Patel, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Air pollution can no longer be seen as just an environmental issue – it’s a public health crisis. “We are losing tens of thousands of lives every year to something that is mostly preventable and the financial cost is a price we simply cannot afford to keep paying.
“We wouldn’t accept 30,000 preventable deaths from any other cause. We need to treat clean air with the same seriousness we treat clean water or safe food. It is a basic human right – and a vital investment in our economic future.”
It comes as Asthma and Lung UK called for tougher clean air laws. Air pollution has triggered potentially life-threatening asthma attacks and severe flare-ups of illness one in five people with lung conditions, according to a new poll by the charity.
More than half of 8,000 UK patients with lung conditions said air pollution had left them feeling breathless, according to the survey.
Charity chief executive Sarah Sleet said: “Air pollution is a public health emergency. It is the biggest environmental threat to human health. For the millions living with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), air pollution can be deadly, yet many people are unaware of the toll it has on the nation’s health.
“Toxic air is a major driver of respiratory conditions and can cause lung cancer and trigger asthma attacks, as well as flare ups of lung conditions such as COPD, exacerbating symptoms such as breathlessness, wheezing and coughing.
“Despite the huge personal and financial costs of air pollution, the government has not yet shown the political will to tackle this crisis.”
On Thursday over 100 doctors, nurses, patients and activists will meet at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London and walk to Downing Street to deliver a letter calling for Government to commit to “ambitious” air quality targets. And one expert from Southampton warned that the nation could be walking into a “microplastics-style crisis”.
Dr Thom Daniels, consultant respiratory physician at University Hospital Southampton, said: “While outdoor air pollution is widely recognised and understood, the dangers of indoor air pollution remain largely overlooked – and I worry we’re sleepwalking into another microplastics-style crisis if we don’t act now.”
And next month a cross-party group of MPs said they will reintroduce a bill, named after nine-year-old schoolgirl who died from an asthma attack linked to air pollution, which aims to make clean air a human right under UK law. Dubbed “Ella’s Law”, the proposed legislation is named after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived 82ft from the busy South Circular Road in Lewisham and suffered the fatal asthma attack in February 2013.
She became the first person to have air pollution listed as a cause of death following a landmark inquest in 2020. A Government spokesperson said: “Air pollution is a public health issue, and we are committed to tackling this issue across the country.
“We have already provided £575 million to support local authorities to improve air quality and are developing a series of interventions to reduce emissions so that everyone’s exposure to air pollution is reduced.”
