Air pollution and asthma: “Going out for a walk can be a bit of a gamble”

Imagine it’s a cold day, you step outside and the cold air catches your breath. This is what it can be like every day when you live with asthma and air pollution levels are rising. The problem is that you are unable to avoid air pollution as it’s in the air you breathe. This is why the UK Clean Air Bill aims to make clean air a human right, not just a “nice to have.”

For many years public focus has been on the impact of air pollution caused by vehicles in large cities, but little progress or effective change has been made. During many of my conversations with people who also have asthma there are often comments about how much safer it was during the covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Pollution levels in cities dropped, meaning that many people with asthma could go out for their hour’s exercise without the worry of how much medication they would need to combat the effects of air pollution. This was great, but obviously not a long term or sustainable situation. As lockdowns eased, levels of pollution soon rose again. For people with asthma who struggle with air pollution, this meant that they had to revert to using inhalers more often.

It is frustrating to see such little progress being made to reduce air pollution. It seems that everyone is working independently rather than as a collective. Areas that were once fairly safe to walk through have now become congested as a result of traffic restrictions in other areas. From personal experience it seems that air pollution as a whole is not being reduced, but instead is being moved from one place to another. This has now made going out for a walk a bit of a gamble. To manage this risk, I take extra medication just in case my airways get twitchy from the air pollution. Sometimes I probably don’t need the medication, but the risk just isn’t worth it.

People with asthma are taught how to self-manage their condition and how to identify triggers. What they are not taught is how to avoid triggers such as air pollution, which is unavoidable and present in the air that we breathe. It can leave you in a scary place when you travel to a different city for a meeting about clean air, but don’t get to that meeting because you end up in the intensive care unit, where doctors suspect that the increase in pollution levels may have triggered your near fatal asthma attack. It is terrifying in itself to experience an asthma attack, but it is also terrifying knowing that to get back to my flat I have to venture out of the hospital and expose my lungs to the same air that caused the asthma attack in the first place.

The Clean Air Bill is desperately needed to ensure air pollution is brought under control. Air pollution affects so many people, but for people with asthma the bill is close to their hearts, as it is a tribute to Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a 9 year old girl who died from asthma induced by air pollution. Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, has spent years campaigning for a clean air bill so that others don’t have the same experience.

No one can avoid air pollution and no one is immune to its effects. It is important to understand the different types of air pollution and the impacts that these have on people’s health, whether the pollution is caused by road traffic, farmers spraying crops, or wood burning stoves.

It would mean so much for the Clean Air Bill to be passed as it would alleviate so much worry for people with asthma. They experienced the results of cleaner air during the covid-19 pandemic and it made a huge difference to their lives. Ill health caused by air pollution has a knock-on effect on all aspects of life for someone with asthma, and for the lives of their relatives and friends. A clean air bill is desperately needed.