Award of RRF/015/25 - Outdoor air pollutant exposure – evidence review

Efforts to address outdoor air pollution in Scotland are largely concentrated on pollution hotspots that are typically found in larger towns and cities. This targeted approach has resulted in notable improvements in air quality, with national air quality objectives now being consistently met across the automatic monitoring network. However, growing scientific evidence demonstrates that even relatively low levels of ambient air pollution, such as those now typical across much of Scotland, are associated with adverse health outcomes. These include respiratory and cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes, and adverse pregnancy outcomes (low birth weight and prematurity). Collectively this constitutes good evidence that air pollution, even at the concentrations found in much of Scotland, is linked to excess ill health.In light of this there is a need for enhanced focus on population-wide exposure reduction. This will help improve public health outcomes and address environmental health inequalities. Exposure to air pollution is not distributed evenly across the population, and vulnerable groups including children, pregnant women, older adults and those with pre-existing health conditions are disproportionately affected.Exposure to outdoor air pollution can be hard to quantify due to multiple sources and behaviours. This responsive research fund project will assess what is already known about exposure levels to outdoor air pollution across Scotland.