Environment and lung health

The Society regards improving air quality, together with a focus on the need to address climate change, as a key priority.

Poor air quality is widely known to have negative effects on lung health, affecting people with existing lung disease, and affecting lung function in children, predisposing them to chronic lung problems in the future.

Exposure to poor air quality in all forms, whether caused by indoors or outdoors air pollution, damp, or second-hand tobacco smoke for example, is linked to social deprivation and potentiates health inequalities.

Climate change represents a health crisis, and along with action to mitigate it, will impact on human health and respiratory health in particular. Increased temperatures and disruption of ecosystems by climate change impacts directly on lung health but is also a cause of poverty, conflict and mass population displacement, it increases individuals’ susceptibility to illness and reduces their ability to access healthcare.

BTS has produced a Position Statement to address improving air quality. Our Position Statement on Air Quality encapsulates the Society’s belief that every person has the right to breathe clean air at home, outside, and at work, and spells out our commitment to support respiratory healthcare professionals to provide advice to patients and their carers on how to mitigate the impact of air pollution on their health.

Through our membership of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC), The Healthy Air Coalition and the Taskforce for Lung Health, the Society is able to support campaigns, support key initiatives, bills and policies, and raise the profile of health on the climate change agenda.

BTS supported the recent ERS call to limit global warming to 1.5C, a global editorial on climate change and health published simultaneously in over 220 journals worldwide, and the Health Climate Prescription letter, delivered to world leaders ahead of COP26.  

We also continue to highlight how clean air is key to healthy development, and BTS was a co-author of the Children’s Charter for Lung Health published in Thorax, which states the principles that should underpin policy and action to ensure that every child and young person can breathe clean air, with healthy lungs.

This page will continue to host BTS activities as well as other resources on environment and lung health.