Tougher Greater Manchester air pollution curbs call

A woman says she has a constant metallic taste in her mouth after riding her bike on polluted roads.

"It's like sucking on a piece of copper", said Cheryl Williams, from Oldham who believes traffic pollution has affected her health.

A Greater Manchester Combined Authority spokesman said tackling the problem of air quality "was a priority" for the city region.

The region's NHS said the city's air quality could cause health problems.

Poor air could "play a role in causing asthma for some children" and exacerbate symptoms like coughing, wheezing and breathlessness for those who already have the condition, a spokesman for NHS Greater Manchester added.

Ms Williams, 57, from Chadderton told BBC Radio Manchester she was diagnosed with asthma in 2014, and recently went to A&E after becoming short of breath.

She said she saw many children between the ages of five and seven in the waiting room "sat with masks on, you could see they were struggling to breathe".

"The consultant said we don't normally have this many people in, but I think the pollution that night was so bad."

Ms Williams' experience is backed by Alba de Toro Nozal from Didsbury, Manchester, who also believes high levels of pollution triggered her six-year-old son's breathing problems as a baby "after walking around inhaling the car fumes, as we live quite close to a main road".

Clean Air Greater Manchester, which is made up of the region's 10 local authorities and Transport for Greater Manchester, said cleaning up the air is a priority, adding it remains committed to a Clean Air Plan.

Figures obtained by the environmental campaign group Mums for Lungs show the number of under 19s being admitted to hospital in Manchester with respiratory conditions has nearly doubled over the past two years.

They have risen from 684 in 2021 to 1,345 in 2023 - an increase of 97%.

Public Health England data shows Greater Manchester has the highest proportion of children being hospitalised for asthma in the country, with 3,810 admitted in 2022/23.

Last year, a University of Manchester report said up to 1,200 premature deaths were attributed to air pollution in Greater Manchester, which has among the worst levels of air quality in the UK.

It said pollution monitoring stations frequently record figures above World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.

The Clean Cities Campaign, which wants petrol and diesel cars to be phased out of cities by 2030, said some parts of Greater Manchester are still exceeding the UK's legally binding air quality standards and can be up to five times higher than the limits recommended by the WHO.

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