The Environment Bill is our Opportunity to Clear the Smoke

Air Pollution APPG Chair Geraint Davies, MP

Air Pollution is responsible for 64,000 early deaths a year in the UK and 8.8 million globally, even more than smoking which kills 7.2million people per year.

The Environment Bill is the opportunity to get provisions into law before we withdraw from the EU’s regime for air quality enforcement. Here we publish a series of articles to help inform debate.

In the first, Professor Stephen Holgate, of the Royal College of Physicians’ ‘Air Pollution: The Public Health Challenge of Our Times,’ maps out the impact on heart disease, lung disease, strokes, diabetes obesity and dementia. Professor Holgate believes the Environment Bill must also include indoor air quality as that’s where children spend 95 per-cent of their time amidst growing air-born risk from fumes and chemicals.

Then, environmental lawyer Kate Harrison, takes a look at the Environment Bill in ‘Risks of a Smoke-filled Brexit’ finding the Bill leaves the door ajar to a deterioration in UK public health.

In ‘Chronic effects of Air Pollution begin before birth,’ Dr Robin Russell-Jones underlines the urgency for action as harm begins from conception, through childhood and adulthood from low birth weight, to children’s IQ and mental health conditions.

Greg Archer’s ‘Diesel Filters make Pollution Worse,’ shows how diesel filters store up particulates, crush them into smaller, more dangerous particulates and belch them out every 300 miles. Motor manufacturers’ lobbying has meant that these belches are not included in the emissions testing regime. This revelation is hot on the heels of the Diesel-gate scandal which exposed car manufacturers for cheating emission tests for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and underlines the to update testing and to bring forward the ban on new diesel cars to 2030.

These findings underline the view that the Environment Bill must include indoor air quality; must require WHO limits for PM2.5 of 10 micrograms per cubic metre of air by 2030 staged as 12 µg/m3 by 2025 and 15 by 2021; must have an independent body to enforce these standards with fines to be paid to the NHS towards the health cost for Air Pollution and to local government for mitigation

We urge MPs to join the APPG on Air Pollution and to support these measures by signing EDM ‘Indoor Air Quality in the Environment Bill’ and EDM ‘Environment Bill Air Quality Enforcement’ (page 12). We urge others to write to their MPs asking them to sign these EDMs.

Kind Regards,

Geraint Davies, MP Chair of the Air Pollution APPG