• Question: Is the air in UK clean enough for our health?

    Asked by to Dre, Charli, Heather, Oliver, Becky on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Charlotte Flavell

      Charlotte Flavell answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi Andreea9,

      I’m not an expert in this but I think it might depend on where you live in the UK.

      Air pollution is a big problem all over the world and we in the UK are no exception. The worst affected areas are big cities like London.

      Other countries, such as China struggle a lot with air pollution and sometimes have heavy smog (dirty air that is like fog) in their big cities. This is a picture: A lot of people choose to wear face masks when it is really bad.

      A recent study suggested that a massive 7 million people died in 2012 as a result of air pollution, of these, 6 million were in South East Asia.

      Therefore, the air in the UK is probably better than other countries, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and clean up our act and reduce the amount of air pollution here.

    • Photo: Heather Price

      Heather Price answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi Andreea9,

      In the UK, every year about 29,000 people die earlier than they would naturally because of breathing dirty air. Unfortunately unless air pollution disappears altogether, there will always be some people that are affected by the air they breathe. That’s because some people live in really polluted areas like cities or next to really busy roads. Cars are a really important source of pollution in the UK, so living near to roads means that you’re probably going to breathe more air pollution than some people that live in the countryside.

      But there are also some people who are more likely to be affected by breathing dirty air because of how they’re made. So for example I have asthma, and when I walk along a busy road in rush hour I often find that my asthma gets worse and I cough and splutter.

      Like Charli said, we have lower air pollution than lots of countries in the world (like in China and other parts of Asia), but we still need to try and reduce the levels in UK air. The thing is, it’s difficult to try and persuade people to reduce the amount of pollution they’re producing because people don’t like to change!

      We all have some control over the air we breathe, though. One thing we can do is to walk along a quiet road to get to school or work instead of a busy one. And try to bug your parents to walk or cycle to work instead of driving….they’ll love that 😀

    • Photo: Oliver George

      Oliver George answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I don’t know too much about chemicals in the air but I could tell you a little bit about microbes in the air.

      There are quite a few microbes that get inside people through the air (stuff like the common cold, the flu or pneumonia). These spread when people who are infected cough, sneeze or spit. This causes little droplets of fluid filled with the microbe to float through the air (or become aerosolised in science speak). These can then be breathed in by someone else who can then become very ill.

      There’s also some microbes that have been shown to be able to cause rain and snow to fall! They are normally microbes which cause disease on plants but it’s not unreasonable to expect similar rain making powers to be found in a microbe that could cause human disease. 😉

    • Photo: Rebecca Williams

      Rebecca Williams answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hi Andrea,
      Charli, Oliver and especially Heather have answered your question really well.

      So I’ll tell you stories about when volcanoes have made the air in the UK bad for out health. Do you remember the eruption in Iceland in 2010 that sent an ash cloud over Europe? If not, ask your parents, there was so much ash in the air, that planes couldn’t fly through it and lots of people go stuck on holiday and couldn’t come home.

      Well, in 1783 another volcano in Iceland erupted and sent an ash cloud over Europe. This was a much much bigger eruption though, so it carried more ash and gas to the UK. The gas, called sulphur dioxide, not only smells of rotten eggs (ew!) but it is bad for us to breath. Historical records from the time record a haze in the air, that made people sick. That summer was hotter than normal and then we had lots of cold winters. The haze killed our crops and animals like cows here, so there was less to eat. The eruption went on for 9 months, and in the UK, an extra 20,000 people died than they normally would. All becuase of bad volcano air from Iceland!

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