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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has conducted any research into the relationship between air and water pollution in the last 12 months.

Defra assesses the relationship between air and water pollution pathways across a range of policy areas. For example, the impact assessment for the proposed Environment Act targets on water quality took into account possible air quality benefits and the newly launched slurry infrastructure grant schemes considered the impact on both water and air quality in the targeting of the scheme. Moreover, Defra has supported projects that improve the evidence base on these pollution pathways. This includes Defra funding for the Uplands Water Monitoring network which delivers a long-term data set on water quality and biodiversity in upland water bodies threatened by air pollution, climate change and land use, and the development of and updates to the Farmscoper tool which has the ability to look at impacts on both water and air quality as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

We annually publish emissions data for all key air pollutants on a 1km grid square for all the UK in our National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI). We also assess the concentrations of air pollutants across the whole UK and publish this information in our Air Pollution in the UK report (https://naei.beis.gov.uk/https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/annualreport/viewonline?year=2021_issue_1#report_pdf).