Webinar: Cleaner Air, Better Health
Overview
At a population level poor air quality, or air pollution, is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK. Long term exposure, over weeks, months and years, can cause and exacerbate chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular, respiratory diseases and lung cancer, leading to reduced healthy life and life expectancy. It is estimated that long term exposure to man-made air pollution in the UK has an annual effect equivalent to between 28,000 to 36,000 deaths brought forward. Short-term exposure, over hours or days, to elevated levels of air pollution (called Air Pollution Episodes APEs) can cause a range of health impacts including effects on lung function and exacerbation of asthma with increases in respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions and mortality. The benefits of tackling air pollution also have health co-benefits of improving health and wellbeing including improvement in overall environment quality, increased physical activity and uptake of active travel and climate change mitigation. Multiple interventions, each producing even a small benefit, can act cumulatively to produce significant overall benefits.
This webinar covers:
- Keynote Speech: Professor Sir Stephen Holgate CBE
- Air pollutant emissions in the Yorkshire and Humber Region: Sources and impacts
- Health evidence, policy context and producing air quality strategies for better health outcomes
- Air quality health indicators and metrics
- Co-benefits to improving air quality on health
- Yorkshire and Humber context: feedback from local authority public health air quality insights survey, DAQI and Air Pollution Episodes, next steps
- Panel Q&A Discussion
Please see below the links for the webinar recording, presentations and useful resources.
Air pollutant emissions in the Yorkshire and Humber Region- By Will Drysdale
PDF Presentation
Reducing the health harms of outdoor air pollution in Yorkshire and Humber- By Pippa Bird
PDF Presentation