This is stated in a manifesto of a coalition of Longfonds and Long Alliantie Nederland and dozens of (pediatric) pulmonologists, nurses, general practitioners, environmental doctors, social doctors and leading scientists.
‘Dirty air makes you sick’
“Even in the womb, children suffer health damage from air pollution. Dirty air makes you sick, at least 12,000 people die prematurely each year from particulate matter or nitrogen dioxide,” says Michael Rutgers, director of the Lung Fund.
“Now we have the chance to do something about it. Let our children breathe freely. They are entitled to that.”
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More often asthma
Rutgers argues for a ‘special envoy for healthy air’: “Connect the necessity of achieving healthy air with the challenges for, for example, climate change, energy transition and the nitrogen problem, and prevent health damage from air pollution.”
Children who grow up in polluted air are more likely to develop asthma. In one in five Dutch children, the development of this disease is related to nitrogen dioxide. Recent research shows that the lungs of children who breathe more polluted air grow less well. According to the coalition, they have a lower lung function at the age of sixteen than children who grow up in relatively cleaner air.
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