Experts can’t agree on mortality risk of nitrogen dioxide

Policy-makers and pressure groups may seem certain that nitrogen dioxide from road traffic is a big killer, but the Government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants isn’t so sure. Andrew Forster reports

Huge uncertainty surrounds the mortality impact of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, says the Government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) in a new report.

The report gives more context to the letter that COMEAP sent last summer to environment minister Thérèse Coffey, which suggested that the impact of NO2 on mortality was much lower than previously thought (LTT 18 Aug 17). That might sound like good news. Yet, curiously, the Government hid the letter...

+95% more