Air pollution making people in UK get long-term illnesses earlier, study finds

Pollution is ‘silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years’, say researchers Gary Fuller Fri 17 Apr 2026 07.00 CEST Prefer the Guardian on Google

Research reveals air pollution is advancing the average age that people in the UK acquire long-term illnesses. For some conditions people could be getting ill more than two years earlier because of the air pollution they breathe.

The first author of the research from Prof Hualiang Lin’s group at Sun Yat-sen University said: “Our study demonstrates that air pollution is not just a risk factor for falling ill; it acts as a silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years.”

Using up to 15 years of health records, the researchers tracked the first occurrence of 78 illnesses in 396,000 people in the UK. This included more than 900,000 hospital admissions. The people studied were all between 39 and 70 years old when they volunteered to join UK Biobank in 2006 to 2010. Each person had supplied information including age, smoking status, alcohol consumption and poverty that could then be allowed for in the air pollution analysis.