Air Pollution
(asked on 8th November 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of setting the air quality target for PM2.5 at 10 micrograms per cubic meter by 2030 on (a) public health and (b) mortality rates.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) does not currently intend to undertake any assessments of the impact of air quality targets for PM2.5 on public health or mortality rates.
In 2023, UKHSA estimated the impact of current emission policies on future mortality and hospital admissions in the United Kingdom. This found a greater than 30% reduction in attributable mortality beyond 2030 for current policies compared with 2018.
In 2018, the former Public Health England estimated that a one µg/m3 reduction in fine particulate air pollution in England could prevent around 50,000 cases of coronary heart disease, 15,000 strokes, 9,000 cases of asthma and 4,000 lung cancers between 2017 and 2025.