Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) premature deaths and (b) illnesses have been attributed to poor air quality in each of the last 10 years.

In 2010 the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants published the report “The Mortality Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution in the United Kingdom”, which concluded, using 2008 data, that the 2008 burden of man-made particulate matter air pollution is, an effect on mortality equivalent to nearly 29,000 deaths in the UK.

In 2014 a Public Health England (PHE) report estimated the annual mortality burden attributable to long-term exposure to man-made particulate air pollution as being equivalent to 25,000 deaths in England.

Estimates of the fraction of mortality attributable to long-term exposure to man-made particulate air pollution for local authority areas in England (2010-15) are provided by the Public Health Outcomes Framework indicator 3.01.,available to view here:

http://www.phoutcomes.info/search/air%20pollution#pat/6/ati/102/par/E12000004

PHE has not quantified the number of illnesses attributed to poor air quality for each of the last ten years.