Air pollution cuts UK life expectancy by nearly two years – study

Air pollution is shortening UK life expectancy by 1.8 years and is linked to more than 500 deaths every week, with costs to the NHS and economy exceeding £500m weekly, new research has found.

Toxic air, inhaled by 99 per cent of the population, causes damage to almost every organ – even at low levels – and contributes to conditions such as heart disease, stroke, dementia and respiratory illness.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) says air pollution is now responsible for 30,000 deaths annually, with estimated costs of £27bn a year – rising to £50bn when wider health impacts are included.

Its new report warns that air pollution is a growing public health crisis and is reducing both lifespan and quality of life.

It highlights the lifelong effects of exposure – from foetal development to increased risk of cancer, mental illness and cognitive decline in later life.

Dr Mumtaz Patel, president of the RCP, said: “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,” said

“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.”

In the report’s foreword, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, wrote: “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.”

Separate research by Asthma and Lung UK found that one in five people with lung conditions had experienced potentially life-threatening attacks or severe flare-ups due to air pollution.

Sarah Sleet, the charity’s chief executive, called air pollution “the biggest environmental threat to human health” and criticised what she described as a lack of political will to tackle the crisis.

Next month, a cross-party group of MPs will reintroduce “Ella’s Law”, a bill to make clean air a legal right in the UK. It is named after nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived 82ft from the South Circular Road in Lewisham and died following an asthma attack in 2013. A 2020 inquest ruled air pollution was a cause of death – the first such finding in the UK.

The government said it remains committed to tackling air pollution, citing £575m in funding to local authorities and the development of new emission reduction measures.