Air pollution linked to 30,000 UK deaths in 2025 and costs the economy billions

Poor air quality may contribute to tens of thousands of deaths in the UK each year, costing the economy and healthcare service billions of pounds.

These are the findings of a new report from the Royal College of Physicians, published on Clean Air Day, today (19^th June), which calls for urgent government action to treat air pollution as a serious and preventable public health crisis.

The report, A breath of fresh air: responding to the health challenges of modern air pollution, features contributions by several researchers from Imperial’s School of Public Health and presents compelling new evidence that air pollution affects nearly every organ in the human body, even at low concentrations.

It estimates that toxic air could contribute to the equivalent of 30,000 deaths in the UK in 2025 alone and cost more than £27 billion annually in healthcare, productivity losses and reduced quality of life.

Dr Gary Fuller, UKRI Clean Air Champion and Associate Professor in Air Pollution Measurement at Imperial’s School of Public Health, served as joint editor of the report. He said: “The UK is falling behind Europe in its legal protections on breathing polluted air. We have an opportunity to make the UK an international leader in creating clean air by using the latest scientific evidence to guide policy and protect public health.

“We are largely managing air pollution using evidence from the 20th century. This report is a call to action to use the knowledge we’ve gained in the last 25 years to protect lives and improve health outcomes across the UK.”

The report draws on a decade of research, including studies led by Imperial College London, to highlight the wide-ranging health impacts of air pollution - from low birth weight and childhood asthma to heart disease, stroke, dementia, and mental health conditions. It also raises concerns about indoor air pollution, citing poor ventilation, damp and mould, and emissions from domestic heating and household products as significant contributors to ill health.

The report includes contributions from leading experts at the School of Public Health, including: Professor Matthew Fisher, a specialist in fungal disease epidemiology; Dr Daniela Fecht, an authority on environmental and health inequalities; and Dr Sean Beevers, who heads the Environmental Research Group’s Air Pollution Modelling team.

Following publication of the report Professor Matthew Fisher, said: "We spend most of our lives indoors, yet know less about indoor air pollution than that outside. The A Breathe of Fresh Air report highlights the need to better understand these exposure in order to identify ‘win-win’ solutions where indoor air quality aligns with net zero and climate adaptation strategies."

Key findings from the report include:

• In 2019 alone, costs for healthcare, productivity losses and reduced quality of life due to air pollution cost the UK upwards of £27 billion – and may be as much as £50 billion when wider impacts, such as dementia, are accounted for.
• Annual costs could still be up to £30 billion per year in 2040, despite pollutant exposures being projected to fall in coming years under current government policies, including Net Zero policies.
• Air pollution could still be linked to around 30,000 deaths in 2025, compared to government estimates of the equivalent of between 29,000 and 43,000 deaths in the UK in 2019.

The RCP is calling for a comprehensive response, including:

• Reducing emissions from wood burning, agriculture, and transport
• Developing a UK-wide indoor air quality strategy
• Integrating air quality into Net Zero policy development
• Launching a national public health campaign on air pollution.

Setting out the scale of the problem in the report’s foreword, Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty writes: “Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health… it affects everybody, and is everybody’s business.”

“This report is an excellent resource, laying out the latest evidence,” he adds. “It also identifies some of the key practical steps that we can take to reduce air pollution, and therefore reduce a major cause of premature illness and mortality.”

Dr Mumtaz Patel, president of the Royal College of Physicians said: “Air pollution can no longer be seen as just an environmental issue – it’s a public health crisis. We are losing tens of thousands of lives every year to something that is mostly preventable. And the financial cost is a price we simply cannot afford to keep paying. There is no safe level of air pollution. The government must act now to protect our health. 

“We wouldn’t accept 30,000 preventable deaths from any other cause. We need to treat clean air with the same seriousness we treat clean water or safe food. It is a basic human right – and a vital investment in our economic future.”

Read the full report A breath of fresh air: responding to the health challenges of modern air pollution.

This article is based on materials from the Royal College of Physicians