EYFS Best Practice: All about… air pollution

The state of the air we breathe has been called a ‘public health emergency’, and a ‘silent pandemic’, with children at particular risk. Every year, pollution causes up to 40,000 deaths in the UK and costs the country more than £20bn, according to the Royal College of Physicians.

The Government has three times been ordered by the courts to publish viable plans to tackle air pollution, and recently published a draft document, containing proposals which environmental lawyers have slammed as ‘weak and incoherent’. With the majority of environmental regulations emanating from Brussels, there are fears that Brexit will make matters worse.

Nurseries, which often need to be in the heart of their communities, as well as easily accessible to parents looking to drop children off on the way to work, can be particularly vulnerable to air pollution. Recent research from Greenpeace revealed more than 1,000 English nurseries are within 150m of a road where the level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from diesel traffic exceeds the legal limit of 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air. Previous studies found that a third of London’s state nurseries are in areas where toxic levels of NO2 threaten children’s health.