Clean Air
Aiming to better predict exposure to air pollution and its effects on vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly, and catalyse innovation in technology, business models and policy best practice
The Clean Air programme is led by the Met Office and NERC, and we are working in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Innovate UK, the Medical Research Council (MRC), the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Government Office for Science (GO-Science), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and the Department for Transport (DfT).
Air pollution is responsible for up to 40,000 early deaths and a cost of up to £20 billion to health services and businesses every year in the UK. The SPF Clean Air programme is split into two waves of work.
Wave 1 of the programme will investigate the links between emissions, atmospheric processes, air quality, its impacts, and policy action. By improving our ability to understand current and future changes in sources, emissions and atmospheric processes, researchers aim to develop improved understanding, analysis and predictive capability from a local to international scale.
The programme will support multidisciplinary research and innovation to stimulate solutions for clean air through predictive understanding of future air quality challenges, a systems approach to analysis, new technologies and innovative policy and practical interventions to benefit vulnerable groups, improve public health and support clean growth.
Learn more about the wave 1 programme in our Science Plan.
Wave 2 of the programme builds on wave 1 and will deploy a nationally co-ordinated multidisciplinary community to equip the UK to tackle more proactively the new challenges it will face in air pollution and health in the mid-2020s and beyond. The work is focused on indoor and outdoor air quality and the links between them. This requires further research on fine scale outdoor air quality as well as indoor sources, their chemistry and other processes as well as the exchange between the indoor and outdoor environments.
View the Clean Air programme website for more information.