The impact on human health of car-related air pollution in the UK, 1995-2005

We have analysed the impact on human health of emissions produced by the UK car fleet in the years 1995 and 2005. Calculations were based on reported measurements of pollutant concentration, literature values of exposure response coefficients and data for mortality and morbidity. A share was attributed to the car fleet based on emissions data. Although the total distance driven in the UK increased by 16% over this period to 460 billion km, there was a significant fall in engine emissions as increasingly stringent regulations (EURO standards) were introduced. As a result there was a decrease of some 25% in the number of deaths attributable to car-related air pollution – down to 5589 in 2005. The estimated number of years of life lost at 65 000 (England and Wales) in 2005, was about half that caused by road accidents involving cars in the same year. We report further calculations which show the effect of car-related pollution on hospital admissions. Our method is straightforward, providing acceptable estimates for health impacts on the predominantly urban population of the UK. There remains a need for more work, particularly cohort studies of morbidity, to establish the long-term effects of air pollution

Chronic exposure to outdoor air pollution and diagnosed cardiovascular disease: meta-analysis of three large cross-sectional surveys

BACKGROUND: Higher exposure to outdoor air pollution is associated with increased cardiopulmonary deaths, but there is limited evidence about the association between outdoor air pollution and diagnosed cardiovascular disease. Our study aimed to estimate the size of the association between long term exposure to outdoor air pollution and prevalent cardiovascular disease. METHODS: We carried out a cross-sectional analysis of data on more than 19,000 white adults aged 45 and older who participated in three representative surveys of the English population in 1994, 1998 and 2003, examining the relationship between self-reported doctor-diagnosed cardiovascular disease and exposure to outdoor air pollutants using multilevel regression techniques and meta-analysis. RESULTS: The combined estimates suggested that an increase of 1 microg m-3 in concentration of particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter was associated with an increase of 2.9% (95% CI -0.6% to 6.5%) in prevalence of cardiovascular disease in men, and an increase of 1.6% (95%CI -2.1% to 5.5%) in women. The year-specific analyses showed strongly positive associations in 2003 between odds of cardiovascular disease in both men and women and exposure to particulate matter but not in 1994 or 1998. We found no consistent associations between exposure to gaseous air pollutants and doctor-diagnosed cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSION: The associations of prevalent cardiovascular disease with concentration of particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter, while only weakly positive, were consistent with the effects reported in cohort studies. The results provide evidence of the size of the association between particulate air pollution and the prevalence of cardiovascular disease but no evidence for an association with gaseous pollutants. We found strongly positive associations between particulate matter and cardiovascular disease in 2003 only, which highlights the importance of replicating findings in more than one population

Materialising links between air pollution and health: How societal impact was achieved in an interdisciplinary project

Societal impact is an increasingly important imperative of academic funding. However, there is little research to date documenting how impact is accomplished in practice. Drawing on insights from Actor-Network Theory, we explore the research-policy interface within an interdisciplinary research project on the relationships between air pollution and human health. Health policy impact was important to the researchers for moral as well as pragmatic reasons but it was a goal that was seen as potentially in tension with that of doing science. In fields such as air pollution and health, networks of policymakers and researchers are inevitably entangled, and we found that processes of engagement operated to delineate science from policy. Health was initially black-boxed and under-explicated, used as a signifier in itself for societal impact. By mobilising networks of policy actors, brought together in workshops to rank the importance of policy scenarios for the research team, the connections between air pollution and health were materialised and made actionable. This was achieved by framing existing data sets, emission technologies, policy expertise, pollutant species and human health in particular ways and, in doing so, excluding others. The process of linking air pollution and health research to achieve societal impact not only influenced how these phenomena were known but, critically, enabled and constrained potential policy responses. Tracing these research arrangements made the material discursive processes of 'impact' visible and analysable as objects of social science scholarship, and therefore generated a productive site for critically engaging with processes of environment and health science and policy

Mobility justice in low carbon energy transitions

Mobility systems raise multiple questions of justice. Work on mobility justice and policy often treats different elements of the debate separately, for example focussing on environmental justice or accessibility. This is problematic as it can privilege policy solutions without a full view of the winners and losers and the values implicit in that. Using analysis of current policy, we investigate how mobility justice can reconcile its different components, and find two major consequences. First, is doubt about the justice of the existing policy approach which tries to tackle transport pollution primarily through a shift to low emission vehicles. This approach privileges those with access to private vehicles and further privileges certain sets of activities. Second is a need to reassess which basic normative ideas should be applied in mobility justice. Work on mobility justice has tended to appeal to conceptions of justice concerned with access to resources including resources enabling mobility. These conceptions say little about how resources should be used. We show that avoiding stark inequalities means collectively thinking about how resources are used, about how we value activities involving mobility, and about what sorts of goods and services we create

Statement and report on long-term effects of particles on mortality

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m02/17501 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo