Urgent and decisive action to tackle air pollution is imperative to save lives

A decade has passed since nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah died of air pollution on February 15th 2013. She was the first person in the world to have air pollution as the cause of death on her death certificate. Our thoughts, now as then, go to her family and loved ones. Her mother Rosamund has campaigned tirelessly for more awareness on the impact of toxic air, with a clear message to government to improve air quality to protect the health of young people. Despite a lot of hot air, she is still waiting for decisive action. We all are.

I first moved a clean air bill on November 1st 2016 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act 1956. Since then, I have been the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution and have worked with many members across the House on creating ambitious policy to improve the quality of air. My latest bill, published last month, brings together all this work for a holistic approach to the issue.

Although the last few years in parliament have been tumultuous, with many unwanted distractions like Brexit, there has also been increasing awareness around health. In particular, with Covid-19, we saw a government campaign that told people to ventilate their indoor spaces by opening a window and to wear masks, which encouraged people to make good decisions for their health and think about the air they were breathing and the environments they were in. It would have been so easy to carry on some of these practices for wider health benefits, but sadly, the government refused to adopt a strategy. Yet still it proves two things – the public do care, and they will act.

Public engagement is more important than ever. The Environment Act’s hopelessly limited deadlines make this abundantly clear. Rather than setting out to achieve ten micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre per year by 2030, as set out in my earlier bill and adopted by the EU, the UK government has set it for 2040, which ignores health advice, campaigners and the coroner’s report into Ella’s death. It’s another decade of delay that will cause around half a million more deaths. It means we are still woefully far from reaching the World Health Organisation’s latest guidelines, which have been slashed by half to an annual limit of five micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre.

It’s now 70 years on from the great London smog that led to the 1956 Act (which was far bolder than current policies), but the task is no less important or the situation any less dire. Dirty air is responsible for lung cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes and obesity. Babies, children and old people are being affected in their physical and mental health. It causes and exacerbates allergies. There are 21 million allergy sufferers in the UK, and 80% of asthma in children is caused by allergies. Overall, this costs the UK economy £24bn each year through productivity loss and cost to the NHS. There are around 64,000 premature deaths each year linked to air pollution.

Outdoor air pollution remains the government’s focus, with strategies that tend to centre on the transport industry, agriculture and others. But these strategies forget that we spend 90% of our time indoors. The report into indoor air pollution commissioned by the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance found that we need better ventilation and filtration – better indoor air quality – to ensure that we can save an estimated £1.3trn over the next 60 years. There are around 900 dangerous chemicals indoors that impact on people’s health, ranging from building materials to volatile organic compounds, cleaning agents, flame retardants, emissions from cooking, mould and damp. This cocktail of poisonous chemicals is further intensified when it mixes with outdoor gasses. This situation is only likely to get worse as ozone increases and nitrogen decreases.

In his annual report on air pollution, the chief medical officer Chris Whitty has called for improvements to ventilation in work, home and transport infrastructure to reduce the spread of infection. He also rightly focuses on wood burners, which are responsible for 40% of small particle pollution. The one and half million people who have wood burners are polluting themselves and their communities, because wood burners are six times worse than HGVs for generating particulates and the vast majority of owners have central heating, making the burners unnecessary. The government needs to be brave and take action to restrict their use and sale.

Better awareness through local air quality monitors, in particular outside schools, will lead to political pressure on local authorities, members of parliament and other representatives to bring about change. We need a holistic approach that brings together all departments and levels of government. It is all very well that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs adopts targets and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has responsibilities in indoor air pollution, but we need the transport team involved and a joined-up fiscal strategy from the Treasury. We need the new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to seek to reduce air pollution as a driver for delivering net zero rather than a helpful by-product. Only if all departments have a responsibility to drive change will they take the issue seriously. And when that fails, we need proper enforcement. In the EU, ClientEarth was able to take the government to court and have fines imposed. The Office for Environmental Protection needs teeth, which it currently does not have.

The government’s first duty should be to protect its citizens. Citizens have the right to clean air and health and, with 41 out of 52 cities in the UK breaching the 2014 World Health Organisation standards, they don’t have it. A Labour government will bring in a Clean Air Act, but in the meantime, it is imperative that we all do everything we can now to save as many lives as possible – for Ella, for our children and for all our futures.