NHS: Health Hazards

(asked on 15th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the effect of poor air quality on the level of demand on the NHS.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 20th October 2020

Air pollution poses the biggest environmental threat to public health. Improving air quality remains a top priority for the government, with Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) working closely together on this issue. The scientific evidence base continues to evolve, and our understanding of the range and scale of health effects associated with air pollution is constantly improving. Public Health England has assessed in a 2018 report[1] that the cumulative costs to the health and social care service from air pollution will be £5.3 billion by 2035, and their evidence shows that a reduction of 1 µg/m3 of PM­2.5 in England in a single year would prevent 9,000 cases of asthma, 50,000 cases of coronary heart disease, 4000 lung cancers and 15,000 strokes till 2035.

The two departments regularly engage at all levels. Earlier in the year the Chief Medical Officer and Government Chief Scientist held a roundtable on indoor air quality with various government departments, including DHSC and Defra. During this productive meeting there was acknowledgment of the evidence gaps and recognition of the need for a cross-government approach to address the issue. More recently Minister Pow attended a Health Summit organised as part of Clean Air Day, which brought together air quality experts, NHS and WHO representatives. Defra will continue to have regular and extensive discussions with DHSC, the research community and the NHS, on the relationship between air quality and health.

We are committed to tackling air pollution in order to improve public health and the environment. This is stated in Clean Air Strategy of 2019, which the WHO lauded as world leading. We are also introducing the first Environment Bill in 20 years, and in it we are committing to ambitious new air quality targets on PM­2.5, the pollutant of greatest harm to human health.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/836720/Estimation_of_costs_to_the_NHS_and_social_care_due_to_the_health_impacts_of_air_pollution.pdf

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