Nursery World - Campaigners call for Government to do more to tackle air pollution around nurseries and schools

More than a quarter (27 per cent) of UK schools - including nursery, primary, secondary and sixth forms - are in areas above World Health Organisation (WHO) air pollution limits, research launched for today’s Clean Air Day 2021 (Thursday) has found.

Nearly 8,000 schools and nurseries in the UK are in areas above the WHO PM2.5 limit of 10ug/m3, nearly all of them in England

An estimated 139,000 nursery children are estimated to be impacted by high air pollution, out of a total of 3.4m affected children, according to the data collected for the charity Global Action Plan by EarthSense.

This year’s Clean Air Day on 17 June, organised by Global Action Plan, is themed to ‘protect our children’s health from air pollution’. As children return to more freedom following the pandemic, the campaign is calling for an environment where children can play and learn without the damaging effects of air pollution.

The charity reviewed the air quality outside schools because children are particularly vulnerable to its impacts and spend a significant amount of time at school. Starting in the womb, toxic air can harm children’s health, causing or triggering asthma, damaging lung development and even affect their ability to learn.

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