What ULEZ has done for children’s lungs should silence its loudest critics

To parents of asthmatic children in London, of which there are hundreds of thousands, this will come as welcome relief.

I’ve spent many sleepless nights listening to my young son coughing and wheezing, thinking about how we can continue to live in a city as highly polluted as London, feeling powerless to provide an environment for my child that would help alleviate his symptoms.

The Mayor of London was courageous and clear-sighted in persevering with the ULEZ, and he deserves credit and praise. This study, which shows how children’s lung growth accelerated with cleaner air, has proven that it was worth it. Cleaner air benefits the most vulnerable in our city: children, who deserve the best chance to grow up healthy and unhindered by preventable illness.

It is so worrying to know that the air your child is breathing every day is having a negative impact on their health. Imagine pouring a glass of water from the kitchen tap and knowing that it’s making your family sick, we wouldn't tolerate that. Dirty air impacts every organ and is now linked to 700 different illnesses and diseases. The body of evidence is overwhelming and grows every year.

Now we know clearly that clean air measures work, so perhaps we can see this as a call to action to continue our efforts to improve the air in the UK.

Let's bear in mind that whilst we are breathing cleaner air since ULEZ, our air is certainly not meeting World Health Organisation guidelines by quite some way.

There is still work to be done - but as we can see from the results of the CHILL study, this work will surely be worth it. We need a reduction in road transport pollution, action on diesel cars and vans, cheaper, better and more accessible public transport, a phase-out of non-essential domestic wood burning and School Streets across the country.

This would undoubtedly yield further improvements, not just for children’s health but for everyone, as well as reducing the costs to the NHS, losses in productivity and quality of life -  estimated to be at least £27 billion for 2025, by the Royal College of Physicians.

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Ruth is a Campaigner at Mums for Lungs.

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