Britain’s air is cleaner than at any time for decades. The pea-soupers of the 1950s are long gone and levels of the major pollutants have more than halved since 1970. Yet the toll of sickness and death attributed to dirty air keeps rising. What is going on?
Simply put, evidence of the harm caused by dirty air keeps rising. For a long time after Britain successfully banished toxic coal smog, invisible pollutants like fine particulates and nitrogen oxides just did not seem that big a threat.
That has changed, partly as a function of success in tackling other risks to health that has made pollution loom larger by comparison. But also because a slew of studies has shown that pollution harms health from the start
