Health concerns surround air quality

How often do you think about air quality?

Most of us will generally only worry about pollution sporadically after reading about it it in the newspapers or in the more general sense of clean transport and green energy.

But it looks like the air's maybe not as clean as we think, with some recent research findings by the MIT, who published the results from a recent study into the UK's air quality on the pages of Environmental Science & Technology.

And it doesn't make for cheery reading: the MIT believes that 13 000 people are dying in the UK every year as a result of air pollution. Now, this is  a big number - especially when you compare it with the number of fatalities from RTAs, which is approximately 2000 a year according to the Guardian's report on this item.

And the outlook? Well, it's hazy at best. But given that traffic is seen as one of the main causes of air pollution, we can only hope that the incoming new generations of emissions-free vehicles will provide a swift fix to the air quality in our cities.

For more on air pollution and health, check out this NHS Choices link on the subject.