Poor air quality has been found to cause 29,000 premature deaths in the UK each year. Meanwhile the Government is failing to recognise the impact of its policies on air quality and is still failing to meet European targets for safe air pollution limits across many parts of the country.

The Healthy Air Campaign is a coalition of NGOs tackling the public health crisis caused by air pollution. The aim is to encourage behaviour that helps cut air pollution and exposure to it and persuade the government to take action so the UK complies fully with international air quality law.

The impacts of air pollution on public health have long been known, yet the Government has failed to introduce measures to meet European targets for air quality. Instead multi-million pound infraction fines from the EU for failing these targets could be passed on to Local Authorities under new powers introduced by the Localism Act.

Next year responsibility for public health will transfer to local authorities, with each setting up its own Health and Wellbeing Board. Local authorities would potentially have infraction fines to pay at the same time as suffering from budget cuts.

via Air pollution ‘is a forgotten public health crisis’ – Farming UK news.