Guidance
This guideline covers road-traffic-related air pollution and its links to ill health. It aims to improve air quality and so prevent a range of health conditions and deaths.
Recommendations
This guideline recommends taking a number of actions in combination, because multiple interventions, each producing a small benefit, are likely to act cumulatively to produce significant change. It includes recommendations on:
- planning
- development management
- clean air zones
- reducing emissions from public sector transport services and vehicle fleets
- smooth driving and speed reduction
- walking and cycling
- awareness raising
Who is it for?
- Local authority staff working in: planning, local air quality management and public health, including environmental health
- Staff working in transport and highways authorities
- Local government elected members
- Employers
- Healthcare professionals, people working in the voluntary sector, non-governmental organisations and education
- Members of the public
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
NICE worked with Public Health England to develop this guidance.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.