Boris Johnson leaves London breathing uneasy | Editorial
Every so often a statistic emerges to send shockwaves through the most innumerate skulls. One such figure, highlighted by the Royal College of Physicians in a report on Tuesday, is the annual toll of 40,000 premature deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution. It implies that the finger can be pointed at unclean air for about 8% of all of the half million or so deaths recorded in the UK every year, a far higher proportion than is usually blamed on alcohol or obesity, two public health problems that grab more attention. Factoring indoor pollution into the mix - familiar fiends such as secondhand tobacco smoke, and overlooked enemies like spray deodorants - only strengthens the link between the air we breathe and our last gasp.
To acknowledge the importance of pollution should not amount to a counsel of despair. Britain led the world in dispelling the coal-caused smogs of the 1950s with the clean air acts, and a generation later called time on leaded petrol. Such progressive past steps have contributed to far longer average lives. With determination, the great culprits of our own time, nitrogen dioxide and diesel particulates, which between them contribute to wheezing, heart disease and cancer, might be tackled the same way. In many other European metropolises, and not least in German-speaking centres, which this week dominate the top flight in a global league table of good cities to live, all sorts of serious action is under way, ranging from pedestrianisation to outright bans on the dirtiest diesel cars.
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