Activists gather in August 2015 to demand clean air as Edinburgh Air Pollution Zone to be expanded. Flickr/Friends of the Earth Scotland. Some rights reserved.On 5 May, buried in the noise of the local election results, the government finally published its draft plan for improving air quality and reducing the toxic levels of nitrogen dioxide experienced by people across the UK.
The government had tried to delay the plan's publication until after the general election in a last minute application to the High Court. But they were forced to release it thanks to activist lawyers ClientEarth who have repeatedly held them accountable for breaching pollution regulations.
This latest draft has been described as “weak and incoherent” and nowhere near enough to stop the 40,000 deaths attributed to outdoor air pollution in the UK each year, including asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.
