DIRTY AIR IS STEALING YEARS FROM YOUR LIFE: Study reveals Brits struck by multiple chronic illnesses caused by polluters
New study shows pollution is quietly stealing our healthiest years, robbing millions of people of good health well before their time
Breathing dirty air is making people in the UK fall seriously ill years earlier than they should, a major new study has found.
Researchers tracked the health of nearly 400,000 people over up to 15 years, looking at when they first developed any of 78 different illnesses. Their conclusion is alarming: for some conditions, people are getting sick more than two years too soon, simply because of the air they breathe.
“Our study demonstrates that air pollution is not just a risk factor for falling ill”, said the lead researcher of the study, Prof Hualiang Lin. “It acts as a silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years”.
Staggering damage
The scale of the damage is staggering. If the UK had met World Health Organization air quality guidelines, the 360,000 people in the study could have avoided a combined 539,000 years of illness. That is more than a year of healthy life handed back to the average person.
And the illnesses involved are not minor. The research found dirty air is linked to earlier onset of high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma and thyroid problems. More shockingly, it is also associated with earlier development of serious neurological and psychiatric conditions, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.
“The most striking finding was the sheer breadth and severity of the impact”, Prof Hualiang Lin said. “We found that air pollutants were significantly associated with the accelerated onset of different chronic diseases, spanning almost every major organ system. We were particularly surprised by the high sensitivity of neurological and psychiatric disorders”.
By cutting particle pollution alone, the onset of schizophrenia, bone fractures, high blood pressure and diabetes could each be delayed by at least six months on average.
Polluters acting with impunity
This is not some distant, abstract threat. It is happening now, in our towns and cities, to ordinary people who have done nothing wrong. The polluters are not just harming the environment. They are taking years of good health from working people, parents and grandparents across the country.
Dr Amy Ronaldson of King’s College London, who has studied the same group of people in earlier research, said the new findings go further than anything seen before.
“Our earlier work highlighted that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution were more likely to develop multiple chronic conditions”, she said. “This new study goes further by suggesting that pollution may also accelerate the onset of many diseases”.
She added: “That means more illness, earlier in life, concentrated in the communities already most exposed to poor air quality. Reducing air pollution has to be part of any serious strategy to reduce health inequalities, ease pressure on the NHS, and improve population health”.
The NHS is already on its knees. Our GPs are overwhelmed. Our hospitals are stretched to breaking point. And all the while, the polluters continue to pump filth into the air that ordinary people breathe every day, with little accountability and even less urgency from those in power.
Clean air is not a luxury. It is a basic right. And right now, that right is being stolen from us, one lost year of healthy life at a time.