When Justin Bieber collapsed last week at the O2 arena in London and was taken to a private clinic feeling “short of breath” and needing oxygen, the rumours started flying that he had had an asthma attack. They were denied by his management, but it would have been understandable if he had. Most of last week, London’s air was heavily polluted, with many of the capital’s pollution monitors recording “high” nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as an acute photochemical smog of fumes and microscopic particles (PM) of acids, chemicals, metals and dust drifted in from the continent, mixed with London diesel exhaust and then became trapped in the still, dry air.

Only a mile or so from the O2, Rosalind Dalton had also been feeling short of breath and needed her Symbicort 200 steroid inhaler. She, too, is a singer, who has been in operatic societies since she was 15, but she says she can’t hold the long phrases these days. She lives near the Woolwich flyover, where a grey, 3ft-high air pollution monitoring box on a slip road to a busy road regularly shows pollution regularly well over the legal limit. Recently she was diagnosed with a long-term lung condition, even though neither she nor her family have ever smoked. “The air pollution has been bad in the last few weeks. On one occasion I set off to walk to Sainsbury’s and turned back because I was having symptoms,” she says.

Meanwhile, Malachi Chadwick found himself wheezing just months after he moved in 2009 from York to London to work with climate change group 10:10. He bikes around 40 miles a week in the city and his doctor has diagnosed asthma – almost certainly aggravated by air pollution. “The air quality of the two cities is noticeably different. When you bike you get [air pollution] full in the face,” she said.

The last few weeks have been stressful for many of the 5.4 million people, including 1.1 million children, who are receiving treatment for asthma and for the tens of thousands of others with respiratory diseases. Since Christmas, there have been four major air pollution episodes, stretching from London to Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds, Dundee and Glasgow. A pollution monitor in Downpatrick in Northern Ireland registered 10, the highest possible level of NO2. On 3 March, the department of the environment advised people to reduce or avoid strenuous activity and Matthew Pencharz, the mayor of London’s environment adviser, said it would be “sensible” for children to be kept away from playgrounds during smog episodes.

continue reading UK air pollution: why are we only now waking up to this public health crisis? | Environment | The Guardian.