“Air pollution. It’s a terrible thing,” says Greg Fell. “Air pollution kills people. There’s zero doubt about that.”
After long delays, the start date for Sheffield’s Clean Air Zone is finally set at 27th February next year. (Although local light-goods vehicles and taxi Hackney carriages will be exempt until 5th of June). And private cars will also be exempt for now.
There’ll be plenty of disquiet from some about the Clean Air Zone, but Sheffield’s director of public health says the CAZ is part of the answer to help Sheffield clean up an insidious pollution that kills hundreds of Sheffielders a year, and leads to debilitating and life changing illness for thousands of others.
“All the evidence about the Clean Air Zone suggests it has the desired impact in terms of cleaning up the air, and that’s a good thing from a public health perspective,” he said. “The sooner we get to cleaner air, the better.”
Around 300 or more people a year die from air pollution in Sheffield, he reckons, while there are 6.7 million air pollution deaths a year around the world. The World Health Organisation reckons Covid had killed 6,588,850 people by early November, slightly less than the number killed annually by air pollution.
“Air pollution, particularly particulates, can affect any bodily process and speed up disease progression,” said Greg Fell.
People assume air pollution is a respiratory issue, he said, but very tiny pollution particles (often called PM2.5s referring to a size of 0.0025 of a millimetre in width) get inside the bloodstream and increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and dementia, for example. He adds there’s plenty of good science that also links air pollution to asthma.
Air pollution is a contributory factor in 5-10% of all deaths, he said. It tends not to get mentioned, as the cause of death might be recorded as a heart attack or stroke, for example. But just take that in. Dirty air, caused mainly by burning stuff in vehicle engines, or log burners, or power stations, or anywhere else, has helped to kill at least one in 20 of the people who go to their graves every day, maybe 1 in 10.
Greg Fell recently pointed to a new report from Taiwan looking at how high levels of particulate air pollution affects brain development in babies. It does, was the answer, with one conclusion that: ‘At 6 to 18 months, fine and gross motor development was adversely affected as well as personal-social skills.’
Again, to be clear to anyone saying that reducing the number of polluting vehicles in Sheffield is something that needs to be delayed, or even stopped, bear in mind that very high levels of tiny particles in the air are now known to damage the development of a baby’s brain, with potentially life-long effects.
And electric vehicles are not a panacea, Greg Fell added, because as well as doing nothing to reduce congestion, their brake pads also produce PM2.5 particles. The real answer is to use public transport and cycle and walk more, he said.
Sheffield’s air quality has been improving over the years, but it seems the more we know, the more we realise the only safe level of air pollution is zero.
“Unquestionably the Clean Air Zone will accelerate our progress to cleaning up the air,” said Greg Fell, “and anything that cleans up the air will help in the brain development of kids, and in the number of people having heart attacks and strokes.”