According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), almost every home in the UK is affected by air pollution.
Some 97% of homes exceed WHO limits for a least one out of three major pollutants.
And 70% exceed in all three major pollutants.
These are grim statistics, but some cities are worse affected than others.
The WHO releases its data for cities across the UK every year, and the most recent data reveals the five worst impacted locations.
There are ways you can check not only your city but your specific home, and there are actions that can be taken to help reverse the effects of dirty air clinging to our towns.
Which cities have the worst air pollution in the UK?
As stated on Comparemymove.com, the five worst areas currently in the UK for air pollution are:
- Warrington
- Bristol
- Stanford-Le-Hope
- Storrington
- Swansea
To understand which cities are the worst affected, it is crucial to understand how the WHO calculates the data.
Data is taken from the WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v11 showing British towns and cities drawing or exceeding the WHO limit of of 10µg/m3 of pollutant PM2.5.
PM2.5 is measured in micro-grams per cubic metre of air and µg/m3 means micrograms per cubic meter.
The cities that have the worst air pollution can change not only year-on-year, but even day-by-day.
Air pollution is caused by numerous factors such as public density, cars on the road, population, local industry and more.
According to WHO, there are 42 cities across the UK that are breaking pollution limits, though none of them are in Scotland.
How to check your town's air pollution
There are a number of ways to check your town's air pollution levels.
iqair.com/uk shows a real time account of city pollution.
It features an interactive map which you can zoom in on and check your local area.
Wind direction is also factored in, which plays a major role in where it's worst effected at any given moment when compared to other locations.
The website also allows you to explore the whole world and compare your country to others.
For a more local tool, use addresspollution.com.
This can be alarming, as you can type in your postcode to see what the air quality is like outside your front door.
The Central Office of Public Interest and Imperial College London have created the detailed map.
Once again, it shows that nearly every home in the Uk is affected by air pollution exceeding the WHO’s guidelines.
If your home exceeds WHO guidelines, then a prompt will pop up saying “DEMAND ACTION”.
It will take you to a petition you can sign that will encourage estate agents and websites to disclose air pollution levels.
Just fill in your name and email address and hit “submit”.
What is the government doing about air pollution?
In January 2019, the government launched a plan to tackle air pollution.
It set a target to get half of UK homes under the WHO guideline to achieve clean air by 2025.
Then in September 2021, the government launched The Environment Act that brought in a legally binding duty to ensure the government brings forward its air pollution targets to October 2022.
The details of the bill can be read on the government website.
New targets were set in March, 2022, the first of which is to reduce the annual average level of fine particulate matter (PM2.5 again) in ambient air.
Other targets include improving the health of UK rivers by reducing contamination and halting the decline of wildlife populations.
