Air Quality in Sheffield

The two pollutants of most concern for health are Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Particulate Matter (PM2.5 or PM10). 

80% of nitrogen oxides at the roadside and 12% of particulate matter pollution (depending on the area) are from road transport. 

[sources: CBI report (2020) and UK gov National Statistics] 

Active travel can help combat pollution. 

• Move More Sheffield reports that 40% of current car commuting trips in Sheffield are less than 1 km in length.

• In his blog, Greg Fell, the director for public health in Sheffield, has said that 30% of all car journeys in South Yorkshire are less than 500m.

Control pollution, protect children, save lives 

In an article in the British Medical Journal in 2021, Andrew Bush, Professor of Paediatric Respirology, Imperial College London explains why children are particularly impacted by poor air quality. Excepts from that article are quoted below.

9-year old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah died in February 2013. In 2020 a coroner ruled that “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.” [Guardian article].

"The association between environmental pollution and asthma attacks is well described,[7] and Ella’s death was a tragedy for her and her family. Even if Ella had survived, she would have experienced lifelong adverse effects from her early exposure to air pollution. Ella was almost certainly harmed by pollution before she was born; maternal exposure to environmental pollution during pregnancy is associated with asthma [8] and impaired lung function [9] in children."

"Exposure in childhood then leads to a slowing of lung growth, [10] and these double hits mean that Ella could not have attained her normal lung potential. Failure to attain a normal final lung capacity by your early 20s carries a 26% risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [11] and an increased risk of premature cardiovascular and all cause morbidity and mortality. [12, 13] Finally, when children growing up on polluted streets become parents themselves, their children are also born with abnormal lung function with all the attendant risks to the next generation. [13] The harms of air pollution in childhood are completely irreversible, leaving a lifelong legacy."

"The coroner at Ella’s inquest heard evidence that exposure to any level of environmental pollution is unsafe. Yet successive UK governments have persistently and scandalously ignored WHO targets."