The pollution problem: cleaning up the UK's illegal air

Sep 03, 2018

Written By Becky Kells, Editor, AllAboutLaw

With thousands of premature deaths per year attributed to poor air quality, this type of pollution is a problem bordering on a health crisis. When it comes to clean air, what legislation is in place – and what legislation needs to be introduced?

Earlier this year, Theresa May announced a new 25-year environment plan – a government strategy which is set to tackle a range of environmental problems. Speaking from the London Wetlands Centre, the Prime Minister highlighted a number of issues and proposed solutions, such as plastic-free supermarket isles, and the omission of harmful plastics by 2040. Environmental organisations and charities praised the inclusion of topics such as plastic waste reduction, and notably, the UK has since seen widespread efforts by food and drink retailers to introduce a plastic straw ban. However, there was one noticeable absence in the environmental plan– a strategy to tackle pollution.

Nearly two-thirds of children across the UK are currently breathing in illegal levels of unclean, polluted air – a statistic which encompasses the whole of London, where every borough was breaching the legal pollution limit. Major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Leeds followed close behind. As these cities become more densely populated and expand at unprecedented levels, it’s hard to propose how to keep the air clean.

Compared to a lot of environmental problems, pollution is fairly easy to ignore – while the UK’s disposable waste problem manifests itself in tell-tale rubbish heaps or residue of packaging littering the streets, dirty air is a relatively invisible killer.

It took a visual manifestation of pollution to introduce the first Clean Air Act in 1956 – the Great Smog of 1952 served as a wake-up call in London, claiming the lives of over 4,000 people, and shrouding the city in smog for several days.

While dirty air isn’t always as visible as it was in the Smog of 1952, it materialises in much more terrifying ways. Today, around 40,000 people die prematurely due to health issues caused by polluted air. It is believed that poor air quality affects children’s development, and produces lower birth rates. For older people, polluted air can stiffen arteries and damage lungs. Recent studies also indicate that sperm shape can be changed by high levels of pollution, reducing male fertility. “Air pollution is the world’s largest single environmental health risk,” said Dr Lao Xiang Qian, the lead author of the study.

But with 40,000 people dying prematurely due to air-related issues, how do we get rid of polluted air? Yearly legal limits of pollution put in place by the EU were famously breached on Oxford Street in London within four days, suggesting that legislation is not doing enough. Roads such as Brixton Road, Euston Road and Marylebone Road all saw levels of pollution which are twice the EU permitted level in 2017.

Researchers said that “enforceable laws” are the most effective way of combatting pollution, with campaigns designed to alert the public to poor air quality being “inadequate”. The government has been sued three times by ClientEarth – a group of environment activist lawyers - because the plans it has drawn up each time are deemed inadequate to tackle the problem at hand. ClientEarth accuses the government of backtracking on “clean air zones” in major cities, which have been changed in plans from “mandatory” to “expected”. The plan does not propose a specific action in any of the 45 locations where pollution levels are illegal.

Currently, a lot of pollution in the UK comes from diesel and petrol vehicles, which means a number of changes to UK transport need to be made. Sadiq Kahn put significant effort into rerouting buses to reduce dirty air in London’s pollution hotspots – when 2017’s pollution evaluation is compared to the same statistics in 2016, areas where buses were diverted had cleaner air.

Secondly, petrol and diesel vehicles need to be phased out. The government has committed to halting the sale of all new diesel and petrol cars by 2040, allowing a 22-year “transition” period in which the nation can prepare for alternative vehicles. However, the National Grid has warned that this presents a fresh challenge; power stations need to generate enough electricity to contend with an electric rush-hour. It would mean more wind farms, and more nuclear power plants.

But for transport initiatives proposed by local authorities to work, overarching legislation from the government is necessary. Last year, Alan Andrews – a lawyer from environmental legal organisation ClientEarth – said: “Local authorities can’t solve all these problems themselves, there needs to be national leadership. The government’s new air quality plan doesn’t commit to doing very much at all. It’s really a plan for more plans.”

It’s not just a problem here in the UK. On a global scale, air pollution is causing huge problems for the planet. In France, Germany, Italy and Spain, pollution levels reached illegal heights, causing the European Commission to propose legal action early last year. The UK was also warned, yet it is unclear what will happen if the UK is threatened in a similar way before leaving the EU, as proceedings in the European Courts can take years.

The US presents an interesting juxtaposition to Europe. Since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970 in the USA, a lot of America’s cities have cleaned up their acts when it comes to air, due to a combination of federal and state regulations. Yet with America pulling out of international climate change agreements under the Trump administration, it remains to be seen whether the work done since the Clean Air Act of 1970 will be rescinded.

As it stands, air pollution has the potential to cause one of the deadliest health crises of our time. While the overuse of disposable plastic products is indeed a problem within its own right – one that deserves to be addressed in the 25-year environmental plan – the poor quality of air in the UK needs to be addressed in parallel.

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