Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bull Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I congratulate her on her work in this area over so many years. We have already heard powerful arguments for the importance of this Bill. According to figures from the World Health Organization, almost the entire global population— 99% of us—live in places where air quality guidelines are not met. The populations of low to middle-income countries suffer the highest levels of exposure, but even here in London, one of the world’s wealthiest conurbations, legal levels for nitrogen dioxide were breached across the entire city in 2021. The city’s pollution hotspots recorded air pollution levels 50% higher than legal limits.

The evidence is clear that poor air quality poses one of the greatest environmental risks to health. An estimated 4.2 million deaths globally are linked to ambient air pollution, including from stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as well as chronic and acute respiratory diseases like asthma. Air pollution is especially dangerous for children because of the juvenility of their brains and respiratory systems, their higher ratio of breathing rate to body size and the simple fact that they spend more time outdoors. I join others in remembering Ella Kissi-Debrah and paying tribute to her mother, who is doing so much to help ensure that no other children and their families have to suffer as Ella did.

The link between air quality and physical health is well established; it should, on its own, be reason enough to act. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that air pollution exposure can also adversely affect the brain and increase the risk of psychiatric disorders, and this is what I will focus on today. Studies published in 2019 by colleagues at King’s College London, in which I declare my interest as set out in the register, showed that exposure to air pollution at the age of 12 had a significant association with depression at age 18. The researchers reported that the most likely cause was

“pollutant particles small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, causing inflammation in the brain, which is known to link to the development of depressive symptoms”.

Children living in the top 25% most polluted areas were three to four times more susceptible than those living in the 25% least polluted areas.

The researchers’ most recent study from 2021 showed that youth in the general population across England and Wales who were exposed to high levels of outdoor air pollution during adolescence were more likely to develop mental health problems as they transitioned to adulthood. Worryingly, the researchers found this across the spectrum of mental health problems: depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, conduct disorder, eating disorders and psychosis. This suggests that exposure to polluted air at this critical stage of brain development is a non-specific risk factor for mental ill-health.

A further study last year among residents in south London demonstrated increased use of mental health services, both in-patient and out-patient, in people recently diagnosed with psychosis and mood disorders. The cost of this to the NHS, never mind the personal cost to the individual, is significant. A recent report from the Mental Health Foundation and the LSE put the annual cost to the UK of mental health problems at around £118 billion.

There are many good reasons to clean up the air that we breathe: reducing deaths from the physical harms caused by pollution and improving the health of the planet are high among them. But the growing evidence of causality between air pollution exposure and psychiatric disorders indicates that interventions to improve air quality, such as those that the Bill proposes, could also play a role in improving mental health prognoses and reducing associated healthcare costs. This suggests just one more reason why the noble Baroness’s Bill makes good sense, and I am happy to offer it my support.