Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of excess deaths attributable to one or more air pollution episodes in the UK in March and April 2014.

The United Kingdom experienced widespread high levels of particulate air pollution in March and April 2014 and observations of hourly mean PM_2.5 (particulate matter) concentrations reached up to 83 μg m^{− 3} at urban background sites.

The former Public Health England performed an exposure and health impact assessment of the air pollution, focusing on two episodes with the highest concentrations of PM_2.5 between 12 to 14 March and 28 March to 3 April 2014. This estimated that approximately 600 deaths were brought forward from short-term exposure to PM_2.5, representing 3.9% of total all-cause mortality excluding external causes during the episodes. Using observed levels of PM_2.5 from other years, the mortality burden was estimated to be is 2.0 to 2.7 times the burden associated with typical urban background levels of PM_2.5 at this time of year.