Dame Sally: Britons are at risk from ‘daily cocktail’ of pollution

A ‘DAILY cocktail’ of diesel fumes, noise and household chemicals is putting Britons at risk, a chief medical officer has warned.

Dame Sally Davies said pollution was a major public health threat, fuelling heart attacks, cancer, lung disease and stress.

She also admitted that the NHS was one of the country’s worst polluters due to hospital incinerators, toxic medical waste and vehicle emissions.

As many as one in 20 vehicles on the road at any one time are working for the health service including ambulances, staff cars and delivery services.

Dame Sally, chief medical officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government, urged the NHS to lead by example and slash its emissions to help prevent illnesses.

The warning came in her annual report which gives recommendations to the Government on public health.

Air pollution including diesel claims an estimated 40,000 lives in the UK each year, mainly through heart disease and lung conditions.

But Dame Sally also warned of the risks of noise pollution from aircraft and busy roads, which has been linked to heart disease, sleeplessness and stress.

Meanwhile, light pollution from buildings or streetlamps is thought to disrupt the body’s daily rhythms and may increase the risk of cancer.

Dame Sally is also concerned about the effects of indoor pollutants such as aerosols, cleaning products and dust.

‘The public is exposed to a daily cocktail of pollutants,’ she said. ‘Some of these can be linked to chronic conditions like heart disease and asthma.

‘This increases the risk for some of the most vulnerable members of our society and places a huge burden on our health service.

‘We are not measuring the health impacts of all these things. Where pollution is quite well measured for environmental reasons, we’re not linking it to health measures.

‘That means we are at risk in ten, 30 or 50 years of finding out that something was harming us and we didn’t know.’

She added: ‘Everybody has a role to play in cutting pollution… Some [NHS] trusts are already blazing a trail and I urge others to follow. We also urgently need to up our game and gather better information on how factors like light, noise and chemical pollution are affecting us.’

To set an example, Dame Sally wants the NHS to phase out diesel ambulances and replace them with electric ones. Staff should be encouraged to share lifts, or cycle or walk to work, and hospitals will be urged to cut waste and use of plastics.

Dame Sally has also instructed local health trusts to publish regular updates on air quality. This should be compared with the number of patients admitted to hospital for lung conditions and heart disease, to measure the impact.

She is particularly worried about the effects on children, who ‘can have lifelong poor health outcomes attributable in part to pollution’.

The report states: ‘Our children are affected by noise pollution from roads near their schools; our houses are washed with light pollution every night; we are exposed to chemicals in the almost invisible dust in our houses.

‘Vulnerable groups… are at a disproportionately high risk from poor air quality.’

The British Lung Foundation’s Alison Cook said: ‘This report shines a spotlight on the physical effects of air pollution. The evidence is overwhelming and the impact on our health is no longer questionable.’