Manchester
Latest news: scroll down to read about our election campaigns
Mums for Lungs: Greater Manchester
In 2023, six years after Mums for Lungs was founded in London, we expanded into Greater Manchester.
Mums for Lungs began in 2017 in London when our founders, who were living close to the most polluted road in Europe at that time, Brixton Road, were shocked into action by the levels of pollution they experienced on a daily basis.
Air pollution is the number one environmental risk to health in the UK, and permanently damages children’s lungs.
Greater Manchester has one of the highest annual mean levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution in the UK, higher even than London. NO2 is known as the “diesel pollutant” as a large proportion of NO2 emissions in the UK comes from diesel vehicles. Recent research by Client Earth revealed that only two areas in the UK are registering even higher levels of NO2 pollution than before the Covid19 pandemic, and they are Greater Manchester and Nottingham.
In Greater Manchester, levels of NO2 are now 1.3 times the current UK legal limit, and over 5 times the World Health Organisation limit. It is clear there is much work to do in order to bring those levels down.
Our Manchester group aims to raise awareness of the health impacts of air pollution, help people to reduce their exposure and contribution to air pollution, and bring about positive change. We urgently need to see a stronger commitment to tackling this huge risk to our health from Mayor Andy Burnham and the ten local authorities.
Our immediate priorities in the Greater Manchester area are:
Building a network of those affected by or worried about air pollution, to call on the Mayor and local authorities for stronger action to tackle air pollution.
Campaigning for School Streets to be rolled out across Greater Manchester.
Lobbying for more awareness of and action on the dangers of wood burning.
Campaigning for a phase out of diesel cars by 2030, to protect the next generation from diesel’s devastating health impacts.
Monthly meetings
Our Manchester Coordinator, Liz Godfrey, runs a monthly meeting - if you’d like to get involved, please email Liz at manchester@mumsforlungs.org, and sign up to our newsletter for updates. We look forward to campaigning with you!
Elections 2024
Local election campaign
We are campaigning to ensure that strong action to tackle air pollution is high on Manchester City Council’s agenda.
We’re calling for:
A pathway to reach the 2021 World Health Organization guideline targets for healthy air with clear interim targets and timescales, a Clean Air cabinet member, action on wood burning and an acceleration of the School Streets programme.
Some of our Greater Manchester volunteers with our campaign asks in St Peter’s Square.
Image credit: Rebecca Lupton Photography
Mayoral election campaign
As part of a coalition of groups in Greater Manchester that includes Clean Cities Campaign, Walk Ride GM, Manchester Friends of the Earth, Sustrans, Living Streets and Asthma and Lung UK, we are calling on Greater Manchester’s Mayoral candidates to commit to real sustained action to clean up the air we breathe.
With the number of children being hospitalised in Manchester for respiratory conditions nearly doubling in the last two years, Greater Manchester’s next Mayor must address this health emergency urgently once elected.
Our asks include meeting interim World Health Organization air pollution guideline limits by 2030, implementing School Streets at 25% of schools over the next five years and taking effective action to reduce wood burning. Read more here.
We launched our campaign by hanging a washing line of babygros, hand-printed with the message ‘Clean Air Now’, in St Peter’s Square.
Image credit: Rebecca Lupton Photography
A letter to Manchester drivers
Sarah, a six-year-old in Manchester, has written this letter out of concern for her friends and family who have asthma.