Almost all UK homes suffer toxic air quality

AIR surrounding 97 per cent of homes breaches toxic pollution levels, a study has shown.

Researchers found 21.5million UK addresses breached World Health Organisation limits on three toxic pollutants. Nearly all homes were over at least one of the organisation’s toxic air limits.

Air pollution has been linked to thousands of premature deaths in the UK every year and many life-long illnesses.

The Central Office of Public Interest (COPI) said it could be worse than previously thought. The organisation has set up a website – addresspollution.org – for people to check whether their address is in a “red zone”.

Rosamund Kissi-debrah’s nine-yearold daughter, Ella, an asthma sufferer, died in 2013. The coroner at her inquest said air pollution was “a significant contributory factor”. “This data shows yet again that the Government is failing the British public,” said Ms Kissi-debrah.

The national pollution checker uses data from Imperial College London, collected from 20,000 monitoring sites in more than 320 council areas.

It shows the levels of three toxic pollutants – PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 – at any UK address and gives them a percentage ranking, from zero to 100.