Imagine for a moment that something was poisoning Britain’s water supply. Imagine that 97 per cent of the population was drinking and bathing in this water every single day, unknowingly letting toxins accumulate in their bodies and the bodies of their children. Most survive, but the poisoned water is linked to as many as 64,000 deaths every single year, while lowering the life quality of thousands more.
Rightly, if this situation arose, the scandal would be enormous. The government would issue apologies, the news would go global and calls for compensation would be almost immediate.
What doesn’t take any imagination is applying the same scenario to the air. Every day millions of people in the UK breathe in unsafe levels of toxic air – yet the issue barely registers on the government’s priority list.
According to the latest figures, around 97 per cent of addresses in the UK are surrounded by air pollution that breaches the safe limits determined by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The poorest, the most vulnerable and ethnically
