The RCP has called for a UK wide public health campaign about air pollution, as new findings show that the majority of the British public are in the dark about the health harms linked to poor air quality including dementia, stroke, heart disease and poor foetal health.
The government must act to ensure the public understand the health harms of air pollution, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has said today, as new findings reveal that less than 1 in 5 British adults (17%) are aware of the link between air pollution and dementia.
According to the YouGov poll commissioned by the RCP, the majority of Brits also believed there was either no link, or said they didn’t know if there was a link, between air pollution and diabetes (95%), stroke (82%), heart disease (70%) and poor foetal health and adverse pregnancy outcomes (55%).
84% did believe there was a link with asthma and 68% with lung cancer. Overall, while 61% of adults believed air pollution posed a risk to their health, 33% did not believe it posed a risk.
In response to the findings, the RCP is calling for a UK wide government funded public health campaign on air pollution, a move supported by 61% of those polled.
Air pollution affects almost every organ in the human body. It has significant health impacts even at low concentrations, including on foetal development, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, mental health conditions and dementia.
According to the RCP’s A Breath of Fresh Air report, air pollution will contribute to the equivalent of 30,000 deaths in the UK in 2025 and cost the economy more than £27 billion annually. A recent University of Cambridge study, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, found that for every 10 μg/m³ of particulate matter (PM2.5), someone’s relative risk of dementia increases by 17%.
The RCP has today written to the secretary of state for health and social care Wes Streeting calling for the public health campaign, arguing that the public must have accurate and trusted information about how air pollution affects health.
The college says the campaign should cover the factors that adversely affect air quality indoors and outdoors – from pollutants from vehicles and wood burning to damp and mould – and give advice on reducing personal exposure, with a focus on vulnerable groups whose health is disproportionately impacted by polluted air.
The RCP is clear that the public health campaign must be accompanied by stronger government action to tackle emissions at their source, including committing to tougher PM2.5 targets in the review of the air quality strategy, as promised in the government’s 10-Year Health Plan.
Commenting on the polling, Professor Sir Stephen Holgate CBE, the RCP’s special adviser on air quality and health, said: “Air pollution is silently damaging the nation’s health. The evidence is clear that air pollution affects almost every organ in the human body, but the public are in the dark about the full extent of the health impacts. We need a public health campaign on air quality so people can understand how the air they breathe may be making them sick, and what they can do about it.
“Air quality isn’t just an environmental issue, it is a public health emergency. The government must launch a national campaign to help people understand the risks they face and take action to reduce them.
“We also need to see robust government action to reduce pollution at source. Education is key, but blame for the problem must not be transferred onto those who suffer the impacts.”
Case study: Lisa Malyon
Lisa Malyon and her newborn daughter lived in a damp property for a year before their health drastically deteriorated. Constant chest infections eventually stopped responding to antibiotics. Lisa – then aged 38 – collapsed with chest pain and was rushed to hospital to be diagnosed with pneumonia. She comments: “The respiratory consultants initially thought the mass on my lung may be cancer, but it was a fungal infection. It took five days in hospital to eventually respond to medication.
“I thought I was clued up about the risks of the indoor environment as my mum is a nurse and my dad is a builder, but it turns out I was clueless. Every week I would buy ‘mould remover’ and spray it directly onto the mould. Little did I know this was feeding the mould and further contaminating our air and spreading the microscopic mould spores, fragments, and volatile organic compounds to other areas of the house for us all to inhale. The chest infections for us both continued, and I was prescribed a mucolytic to help me clear my chest every morning.
“The only time we felt better was when we were out of the house, so we decided to move. After moving, my health made a miraculous recovery, but my poor daughter’s lungs have been damaged forever. Phoebe takes a preventative steroid inhaler morning and night to support her struggling lungs to defend themselves against infections. When she doesn’t have the inhaler, she struggles to breathe and her little voice weakens – it’s heart-breaking. Her lungs will never recover as the damage was done when her lungs were still developing.
“My heart goes out to every mother who lives in a damp property and can’t escape it. That’s why I have created Indoor Air Aware and the Mums Versus Mould online community to empower families to protect their health against the microbial contamination that results from a water damaged home.”
- YouGov surveyed 2,147 adults across Great Britain between 2-3 November 2025. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).
- View the full YouGov data here.
- The RCP’s report A Breath of Fresh Air: Responding to the health challenges of modern air pollution was published June 2025.
- In a paper published in The Lancet Planetary Health, a team led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, found a ‘positive and statistically-significant association between dementia and three types of air pollutant: particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, soot.