30,000 deaths this year will be linked to air pollution
A new report from doctors says air pollution negatively affects almost every organ in the body
Leading doctors say that tens of thousands of deaths this year will be linked to air pollution.
Air pollution negatively affects almost every organ in the body and around 30,000 UK deaths will be linked to toxic air in 2025, according to the new report from doctors.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said that there is “no safe level” of air pollutants as it warned that around 99% of the UK population are breathing in “toxic air”.
Exposure to air pollution can shorten people’s lives by 1.8 years, which is “just behind some of the leading causes of death and disease worldwide”, including cancer and smoking, the authors wrote.
Air pollution impacts cancer, heart disease, stroke and mental health
The report highlights some new research findings about air pollution and ill health over the last decade, including that even if low concentrations air pollution can have impacts on foetal development, cancer, heart disease, stroke, mental health conditions and dementia.
The report also highlights how air pollution is estimated to have an economic cost of £27 billion a year in healthcare costs and productivity losses.
This figure would be significantly higher – up to £50 billion – if wider impacts such as dementia are taken into account.
The College has called for ambitious action form Government to tackle the issue, as it urged ministers to “recognise air pollution as a key public health issue”.
Air pollution 'the most important environmental threat to health'
In the forward of the report, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, said: “Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, with impacts throughout the life course.
“It is an area of health where the UK has made substantial progress in the last three decades with concentrations of many of the main pollutants falling rapidly, but it remains a major cause of chronic ill health as well as premature mortality.
“Further progress in outdoor air pollution will occur if we decide to make it, but will not happen without practical and achievable changes to heating, transport and industry in particular.
“Air pollution affects everybody, and is everybody’s business.”
Dr Mumtaz Patel, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Air pollution can no longer be seen as just an environmental issue – it’s a public health crisis.
“We are losing tens of thousands of lives every year to something that is mostly preventable and the financial cost is a price we simply cannot afford to keep paying.
“We wouldn’t accept 30,000 preventable deaths from any other cause. We need to treat clean air with the same seriousness we treat clean water or safe food. It is a basic human right – and a vital investment in our economic future.”