Skip to content
Sign in
Health · Global

Campaign group links 213,341 child breathing cases to air pollution

Mums for Lungs obtained figures showing 213,341 paediatric hospital admissions and A&E attendances for respiratory conditions across NHS trusts in 11 English cities in 2025. The campaign group said children aged three and under accounted for 120,000 of the reported cases.

AI-assisted synthesis · Based on 2 outlets' reporting · Full text read from 1 of 2 outletsHow it's made

View timeline · 1 entry
2 outletsLatest reporting 3 min read
None of these outlets is rated yet
Updat3 graphic: United Kingdom
Updat3 graphic · Map data: Natural Earth Natural Earth (public domain)

What happened

The brief

Freedom of Information figures obtained by campaign group Mums for Lungs recorded 213,341 paediatric hospital admissions and A&E attendances for respiratory conditions across responding NHS trusts in 11 major English cities in 2025. The figures prompted calls for stronger action to tackle air pollution, according to healthcare-management.uk.

Children aged three and under made up more than half of the cases in the campaign group's account: Mums for Lungs said 120,000 babies and toddlers were affected. The total combines hospital admissions with A&E attendances; the article gives separate counts of at least 72,661 paediatric respiratory admissions and 140,680 A&E attendances where data was supplied.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust recorded 1,072 admissions of babies and toddlers with breathing difficulties in 2025, compared with 654 in 2023. The article describes that increase as 63.9%. It does not present the trust figures as a count of all children affected across Manchester, but as admissions recorded by that foundation trust.

The article connects the increase to the decision by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to scrap plans for a Clean Air Zone in 2023. It does not give further detail about the decision or establish that it caused the rise in admissions. Its account places the figures alongside calls for stronger action against air pollution, without specifying who made those calls.

Among the areas listed, Greater Manchester accounted for 20,863 cases across the trusts included in the dataset. Birmingham recorded 19,627, Liverpool 12,066 and Sheffield 10,724. These are figures reported for the trusts covered, rather than a complete count for every child in each city.

The account's overall finding is that the data records a substantial number of respiratory-related hospital admissions and emergency department attendances among children in the named cities. It attributes the figures to Mums for Lungs' collection of Freedom of Information data and reports them for 2025, while the Manchester comparison uses 2023 as its earlier reference year.

The article does not detail the specific policy measures sought beyond calling for stronger action to tackle air pollution.

Why it matters

  • The reported 213,341 admissions and A&E attendances represent a concrete health-service burden from paediatric respiratory conditions across trusts in 11 English cities.
  • Mums for Lungs said babies and toddlers aged three and under accounted for 120,000 cases, more than half of the reported total.
  • Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust recorded 1,072 admissions of babies and toddlers with breathing difficulties in 2025, compared with 654 in 2023.
  • Mums for Lungs' figures prompted calls for stronger action to tackle air pollution.

What to watch next

  • Whether Mums for Lungs or others specify the stronger action they are calling for to tackle air pollution.
  • Whether Greater Manchester's plans for a Clean Air Zone change after Andy Burnham scrapped them in 2023.
  • Whether Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust records further changes in admissions of babies and toddlers with breathing difficulties.

How it's being covered

Coverage analysisShow details
2 source articles · 2 unique outlets
Coverage mix: Not enough rated outlets
Where the outlets are based: Europe 50% · Unknown 50%
None of the outlets covering this story is rated yet, so no coverage mix is shown.
Geography
Where the outlets covering this story are based.
2 unique outletsDominant coverage: Europe
Limited coverage
  • Coverage is currently limited to 2 outlets.
How we measure coverage

How outlets' accounts compare

Updat3 does not yet have enough full reports to compare how outlets framed this story.

Timeline

Developments from this story's sources, dated background we compiled and fact-checked, and our earlier coverage. Each row says which.
  1. In 2021, WHO revised its air-quality guidelines, lowering the recommended annual limit for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 10 to 5 micrograms per cubic metre.
    Background · from our historical context

How we got here

Before the current campaign over children’s breathing problems, the World Health Organization’s 2018 report, *Air Pollution and Child Health: Prescribing Clean Air*, consolidated evidence that polluted air harms children’s respiratory health and estimated that 93% of children under 15 lived in areas where outdoor fine-particle pollution exceeded WHO’s then-recommended level.

In 2021, WHO revised its air-quality guidelines, lowering the recommended annual limit for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 10 to 5 micrograms per cubic metre.

Original sources

2 articles from 2 outlets

Every story links to the reporting it was built from. How we choose sources

Spotted a factual error, a broken link or a misleading summary? Tell us.