Meeting of the Parliament 12 March 2014
Every day, on the streets of towns and cities across Scotland, we are exposed to pollutants that can and do damage public health. From Glasgow to Edinburgh, from Aberdeen to Dundee, in my constituency and across Scotland, air pollution is a serious and growing problem that impacts on every one of us every day.
As other members have mentioned, it is an absolute scandal that every year in Scotland at least 1,500 people die prematurely because of this silent and invisible killer. Across the UK, the figure is 29,000 a year and rising. It is a huge concern that parts of my constituency have the highest air pollution levels in Fife. For example, the nitrogen dioxide and PM10 levels are so high in Appin Crescent, which is near the centre of Dunfermline, that the area is subject to an air quality action plan. There is absolutely no doubt—anyone who has been stuck in a traffic jam on Halbeath Road could tell members this—that excessive road traffic and congestion in the area is to blame.
As Claire Baker mentioned, air pollution is a danger to public health and the wider environment. Short-term exposure has been linked to an increase in hospital admissions, with tens of thousands of people across Scotland suffering respiratory symptoms on days when particle levels are high. However, it is the impact of long-term exposure that is most alarming.
In 2013, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified the cocktail of air pollution that we are exposed to every day as carcinogenic to humans and named it as the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths. Recently, a European study found that long-term exposure to small and fine particles increases the risk of coronary events, including heart attacks and unstable angina, with the link seen at exposure levels that are below Scottish air pollution standards—and we are not even meeting those standards.
Those frightening findings are undermining public health and communities. They are undermining social justice, too, because it is society’s most vulnerable—the sick, the young and the elderly—who are most at risk from exposure to dangerous air pollution levels and who are most likely to suffer health consequences as a result of our failure to act.
After smoking, the biggest public health risk that we face is from the very air that we breathe. The World Health Organization sets guidelines and limits for different air pollutants that Scotland should have achieved almost a decade ago. However, those legal limits are failing to be upheld in many communities. As a result, tens of thousands of people have paid the ultimate price.
The Scottish Government has been in power for seven years. While I recognise that some action is being taken, the reality is that we are failing to meet the standards that we have set ourselves and the lower standards that are set by the European Union.