Air pollution in the United Kingdom

Air pollution in the United Kingdom has long been considered a significant health issue, and it causes numerous other environmental problems such as damage to buildings,[1][2] forests, and crops.

[10][11] The UK government has plans to improve pollution due to traffic, mainly through the introduction of urban Clean Air Zones[12] and banning the sale of new fossil fuel cars by 2030.

Sulphur-rich coal from this exposed seam was increasingly being used because of dwindling supplies of wood in and around cities, but it produced stifling smoke and fumes.

[23][24][25] Through the 1800s, coal-burning for the Industrial Revolution in particular made the UK the world's leading source of carbon-based air pollution by a great margin (surpassed by the United States in 1888 and Germany in 1913).

On 29 April 2015, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the government must take immediate action to cut air pollution,[42] following a case brought by environmental lawyers at ClientEarth.

One study[48] performed by the Calor Gas company and published in The Guardian newspaper compared walking in Oxford on an average day to smoking over sixty light cigarettes.

[51] This source offers a wide range of constantly updated data, including: DEFRA acknowledges that air pollution has a significant effect on health and has produced a simple banding index system[52] that is used to create a daily warning system that is issued by the BBC Weather Service to indicate air pollution levels.

[55] Pollutants, notably toxic particles emitted by diesel vehicles are entering children's lungs, potentially getting into their blood streams and their brains.

Air pollution leads to the equivalent of 40,000 early deaths, seriously impacts the lives of hundreds of thousands more, and costs the NHS and social care services £40m annually.

[60] Toxic air leads to the equivalent of around 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK – 9,000 in London – and it leaves hundreds of thousands more suffering serious long-term health problems.

[61][62][63] London mayor Sadiq Khan launched the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in April 2019 which involves a charge on older diesel and petrol cars with £12.50 per day.

[61][64] The ULEZ was expected to cause a 20% reduction in road traffic emissions and resulted in a drop of the worst polluting vehicles entering the zone each day from 35,578 in March to 26,195 in April after the charge was introduced.

In January 2019, for example, it reported that pollution from particulates is up to 30 times higher on the London Underground than on streets in the roads above, with the Northern Line having the worst air quality.

[73] In July 2008, in the case Dieter Janecek v. Freistaat Bayern, the European Court of Justice ruled that under this directive[73] citizens have the right to require national authorities to implement a short term action plan that aims to maintain or achieve compliance to air quality limit values.

[74][75] This important case law appears to confirm the role of the EC as centralised regulator to European nation-states as regards air pollution control.

[77] In March 2011, the Greater London Built-up Area remained the only UK region in breach of the EC's limit values, and was given three months to implement an emergency action plan aimed at meeting the EU Air Quality Directive.

[79] As well as the threat of EU fines, in 2010 it was threatened with legal action for scrapping the western congestion charge zone, which is claimed to have led to an increase in air pollution levels.

[80] In response to these charges, mayor of London Boris Johnson has criticised the current need for European cities to communicate with Europe through their nation state's central government, arguing that in future "A great city like London" should be permitted to bypass its government and deal directly with the European Commission regarding its air quality action plan.

Robert Angus Smith lectured on subjects such as urban sanitation and acid rain[97][98] and, in the 1840s, wrote two lengthy, heartfelt letters to The Manchester Guardian highlighting the problem of air pollution, noting: "The gloominess and uncleanness is everywhere around us; the depression of filth on the spirits and on the pockets is continually before our eyes; the destruction of our landscapes and of our town views is undoubted, and can we fail to look upon this as a small evil?

"[99] The meteorologist Rollo Russell, who warned of London's dangerous "fogs" in 1880, over 70 years before the Great London Smog, has been described as a "forceful" campaigner,[32] while John Switzer Owens, who helped to establish pollution monitoring across the UK, was closely linked to the first major British air pollution campaign group, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society (CSAS), established in 1898 (later renamed the National Society for Clean Air and now known as Environmental Protection UK).

[96][100] British air pollution campaigning currently involves a mixture of grassroots activism (by groups such as Mums for Lungs and individual campaigners such as Rosamund Kissi-Debrah),[101] public health awareness (through events such as Clean Air Day),[102] legal work (advanced by activist lawyers such as ClientEarth),[103] and more traditional campaigning (by environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, public health advocacy groups such as British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK, and organizations that raise health and safety issues, such as the British Safety Council).

[104][105] Citizen science projects combine scientific research with public health awareness raising and grassroots environmental campaigning.