Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton helped launch the Healthy Air Campaign with Clare Nasir, ITV weather presenter and Healthy Air Campaign ambassador.The Healthy Air Campaign seeks to increase public awareness and understanding of the health impacts of air pollution and help communities mitigate those impacts and adapt to reduce them.Every year, 29,000 premature deaths are attributable to poor air quality in the UK – nearly 5% of all annual UK deaths – with an average loss of life expectancy of eleven years. The most vulnerable in our communities are the worst affected, with children, the elderly, those with existing health problems and underprivileged communities disproportionately impacted.Recent research suggests that air pollution can lead to the onset of asthma in children, permanently reduce lung capacity and trigger heart attacks and strokes in those already at risk.The launch of the campaign marks 55 years since the Clean Air Act received Royal Assent. The ‘Great Smog’ of 1952 killed some 4075 people in London and resulted in new, effective air pollution laws to curb the problem of coal smoke. Coal smoke has now been supplanted by emissions from road vehicles as the number one threat to our health in the air. The kind of air pollution has changed but it has not gone away.Neil Parish, speaking on the campaign, said:“I would like to congratulate the Healthy Air Campaign on bringing such an important issue to light. It has been almost 60 years since The Great Smog of London killed people in their thousands. Today the public face a similar threat with 29,000 premature deaths a year; most of these deaths are from the most vulnerable in our society. In 1956 we had the Clean Air Act. Today the Government must act to stop these tragic and preventable deaths and the public need to be aware of the dangers.”Clare Nasir said:“I am proud to be working as an ambassador for the Healthy Air Campaign to help raise public awareness about the health impacts of poor air quality and to promote healthier lifestyles that will lead to cleaner air. Over 70 percent of car journeys are less than five miles and 23 percent are under a mile and whenever we get in the car to go up the road to the corner shop or to drop the kids off at school the air all of us breathe is being polluted.”The Healthy Air Campaign seeks to increase public awareness and understanding of the health impacts of air pollution and help communities mitigate those impacts and adapt to reduce them.It will achieve this by:

• Promoting active lifestyles among individuals, as part of a joined-up sustainable transport, air quality and public health approach within communities
• Driving action to effectively monitor, report and reduce air pollution at a local and national level
• Advocating a new government air quality and public health strategy integrated across departments

For more information you can visit the Healthy Air Campaign website at www.healthyair.org.uk or follow them of Twitter: @HealthyAirUK.