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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of air pollution on the (a) short-term and (b) long-term of (i) public health and (ii) the level of non-communicable disease mortality.

Long-term exposure to air pollution reduces life expectancy by increasing deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory conditions and from lung cancer.

Short term peaks in air pollution are also associated with a range of adverse health effects including exacerbation of asthma, effects on lung function as well as increases in daily mortality and hospital admissions (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/comeap-quantification-of-mortality-and-hospital-admissions-associated-with-ground-level-ozone).

Defra’s Daily Air Quality Index (https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/air-pollution/daqi) assists in understanding air pollution levels and suggests recommended actions and health advice. Such advice applies to anyone experiencing symptoms.

The latest report from the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution (COMEAP), an expert committee of the Department of Health and Social Care, estimated that long-term exposure to man-made pollution in the UK has an annual effect equivalent to 28,000 to 36,000 deaths (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nitrogen-dioxide-effects-on-mortality). COMEAP has recently provided advice on the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular disease (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-pollution-and-cardiovascular-disease-mechanistic-evidence) and is currently assessing the evidence in relation to cognitive decline.

Public Health England (PHE) has also estimated the fraction of adult mortality attributable to long-term exposure to particulate air pollution at local authority level (https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/public-health-outcomes-framework).

PHE have undertaken research (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-pollution-a-tool-to-estimate-healthcare-costs) to quantify the effect of air pollution on the incidence of disease and, therefore, the costs to health and social care services. These modelled data shows that reducing the concentration of PM_2.5 by 1 µg/m³ in England in a single year can prevent around 50,000 cases of coronary heart disease, 15,000 strokes, 9,000 cases of asthma and 4,000 lung cancers over the following 18 years.