FOI-2023-1088

You asked

How many people have died in the UK with the sole cause of death being pollution from 2000 to present. How many people have died in Newcastle Upon Tyne UK with the cause of death being solely pollution from 2000 to present date.

We said

Thank you for your request.

We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.  

Causes of death are certified in most cases by a doctor, who records the sequence of medical conditions and relevant events leading to, or contributing to, the death, based on the deceased's healthcare records and other available information, such as laboratory tests or post-mortem investigation. Some deaths are certified by a coroner who determines the causes of death following an inquest, based on all the available evidence. It is unusual for wider contextual factors such as exposure to pollution or air quality to be recorded among the causes of death.  

One death in England and Wales in the period 2001 to 2021 had exposure to air pollution (International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10) code Z581) recorded on the death certificate. Analysis of 2022 data will be published in July 2023 to allow the inclusion of late registrations, which are deaths referred for Coroner investigation. This death was not registered in the Newcastle Upon Tyne area.  

Data for 2022 will be published in September 2023 as part of the Deaths Registered Series 

It may be more informative to consider epidemiological studies which estimate numbers or proportions of incidence and deaths which can be attributed to exposure to pollution or poor air quality. A number of reports have been published by Public Health England (now the UK Health Security Agency) on different aspects of air pollution and health.