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Thu 24 Jul 2025
Successive governments have failed to tackle the dangerous health, environmental and economic impacts of nitrogen pollution in England, a House of Lords report has warned.
The pollution is mainly caused by agriculture, sewage, transport and industry, but a lack of regulation and enforcement has allowed it to proliferate.
The cross-party Environment and Climate Change Committee has created a report with a number of recommendations for key sectors.
On agriculture, it advocates low-emission spreading techniques for manure, digestate and urea by 2027, improved enforcement of existing rules around water and fuel usage and extending environmental permitting regulations to large dairy and beef farms within two years.
On tackling pollution from rivers and water bodies, the report calls on more collaboration between the wastewater and agricultural sectors on upstream, catchment-based and nature-based solutions, as well as improved monitoring from wastewater treatment plants.
For transport it recommends a “credible, accountable and funded plan” to ensure that targets implemented as part of the revised Clean Air Strategy are actually met. Oxford Street in London, for example, is one of the most polluted areas in the UK and typically breaches the annual legal EU limit for nitrogen dioxide in early January, despite the problem being long understood.
Baroness Sheehan, chair of the committee, said: “Nitrogen is an essential chemical element for all living things. It constitutes 80% of the air we breathe. However, when nitrogen combines with other elements it can form dangerous and deadly pollutants that affect air quality, contributing to tens of thousands of premature deaths per year and damaging and killing aquatic life, precious habitats, plants and wildlife.
“The associated economic, social and environmental costs are immense. It is an essential priority to quantify the major flows, sources and sinks of nitrogen and minimise nitrogen pollution by capturing and re-using pollutants, turning them from damaging waste into a valuable resource.
“We are therefore calling on the government to take a more strategic, holistic and innovative approach to nitrogen management, recognising the importance of tougher regulation and the opportunity to deliver improved outcomes for public health, the climate, nature, wildlife and farmers.
“Our report also identifies low-hanging measures to reduce deadly nitrogen pollution, which we urge the government to act on immediately.”
University of York researchers recently conducted a study into air pollution exposure among pavement users in urban environments and concluded that positioning car exhausts on the right could slash this by up to a third.
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