We urgently need new, life-saving clean air plans
Professor Sir. Stephen Holgate, a respiratory consultant and clean air expert, explains how air pollution is damaging our lungs and the action urgently needed to tackle it.
Toxic air is a health emergency. It may be invisible but the threat it poses to our health on a daily basis is very real, and in some cases even deadly. These toxic gases and tiny particles cut thousands of lives short every year and affect the lives of many more.
A lethal threat to our lungs
As a respiratory practitioner and clinical researcher on air pollution, I see and hear about the damaging effects of air pollution every day. It has been well known for many years that air pollution is a trigger for lung conditions like asthma, and there is mounting evidence it is also a contributing cause. Its damaging effects, from the moment we are conceived until old age, are well-documented; with evidence linking it to lung damage, cancer, cardiovascular and degenerative diseases, preterm births and even cognitive impairment.
Ella’s legacy
Last year I gave expert testimony to the inquest of Ella Kissi-Debrah, a young girl from London who had severe asthma. For years, health professionals had been baffled by Ella’s symptoms and the severity of her condition, yet on reviewing the evidence it became increasingly clear to me that toxic air had played a significant and deadly role. Air pollution put Ella’s condition on a knife-edge and forced her family to live in constant fear. The coroner agreed, and for the first time anywhere in the world, air pollution featured on someone’s death certificate.
We’ve reached a tipping point
This landmark case cannot go ignored. We in the medical profession and the general population have to stand up and say something. There is no debate that air pollution is a serious public health problem, yet awareness in the health community of how to support patients affected by pollution is still low and much more needs to be done by governments to safeguard people’s health. What’s more, action to tackle it keeps being delayed, with the Environment Bill being the latest casualty last month. Every day toxic air levels continue, is a day that people’s health is being unnecessarily damaged.
Further cross-government action is urgently needed
That’s why I am delighted to support the British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK in calling for the immediate publication of new clean air plans that set out cross-government action to protect us all from harm. Just as air pollution emissions don’t stop at local authority or national borders, action to tackle it must span government departments and be underpinned by world-leading health standards if we’re truly going to protect people.
Millions of people across the UK are being left behind by clean air policy, now is the time to change it and put health at the centre of new clean air plans.
Sign Asthma UK’s petition today and demand change.
Professor Sir Stephen Holgate
Clinical Professor of Immunopharmacology
UKRI Clean Air Champion and Special Advisor to the RCP on Air Quality
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