Air pollution will be linked to around 30,000 deaths this year alone in the UK, with 99 per cent of the population breathing in “toxic air”, leading doctors have warned.
There is “no safe level” of air pollution, which negatively affects nearly every organ in the body, according to a new report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).
Despite emissions having reduced significantly in recent decades, even low concentrations of air pollution can have impacts on foetal development, cancer, heart disease, stroke, mental health conditions and dementia, the report warns.
The doctors estimate air pollution has an economic cost of £27bn a year in healthcare costs and productivity losses, rising to as much as £50bn if wider impacts such as dementia are taken into account.
More than 100 doctors, nurses, patients and activists will march to Downing Street from Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children on Thursday to deliver a letter calling for the government to commit to “ambitious” air quality targets.
“Air pollution can no longer be seen as just an environmental issue – it’s a public health crisis,” said RCP president Dr Mumtaz Patel.
“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.”
In a foreword to the report, England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty warned that air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, causing impacts felt throughout the course of people’s lives.
Prof Sir Chris said: “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.”
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 report states.
A previous study by the UK Health Security Agency in 2022 estimated that air pollution was responsible for between 29,000 and 43,000 deaths a year in the UK among adults over the age of 30.
The RCP estimates that it will be linked to 30,000 preventable deaths this year, down from an estimated 40,000 in 2016.
Exposure to air pollution is distributed unevenly in the UK, the report states. While urban areas tend to have higher concentrations of traffic-related pollution, rural locations often experience air pollution linked to specific activities, such as solid fuel or wood burning, agriculture, road transport, or forest and heathland fires.
Research commissioned by City Hall in 2023 found that ethnic minorities and the poorest families were most likely to live in areas of London with the most dangerously polluted air.
The RCP is urging ministers to “recognise air pollution as a key public health issue”, with the Asthma and Lung UK charity also among those calling for tougher clean air laws.
A new survey from the charity suggests that one in five people with lung conditions have suffered potentially life-threatening asthma attacks and severe flare-ups of illness as a result of air pollution.
More than half of 8,000 UK patients with lung conditions said air pollution had left them feeling breathless, according to the survey.
“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,” said the charity’s chief executive Sarah Sleet.
“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.”
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.”
Next month, a cross-party group of MPs are expected to reintroduce a bill which aims to make clean air a human right under UK law, and to require ministers to achieve clean air throughout England by 2030. Green MP Sian Berry will present the bill to the Commons on 1 July.
Dubbed “Ella’s Law”, the proposed legislation is named after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived just metres from the busy South Circular Road in Lewisham and died at the age of nine after suffering a 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.
