Why doctors need to advocate for clean air | Letter
Re your article (UK doctors involved in climate protests face threat of being struck off, 16 March), the Medical Act 1983 defines the first objective of the General Medical Council as preventing ill health. The GMC document Good Medical Practice requires doctors to promote the health and safety of the public.
Scientific evidence is that air pollution, largely from burning fossil fuels, is causing harm to the public, including heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and dementia.
The public expects doctors to provide candid information on risk. Breathing air polluted at UK levels is a risk. In the global burden of disease it is a greater risk factor for non-communicable diseases than obesity, inactivity, alcohol and passive smoking. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has clear guidance that doctors should inform families and patients of the risk of polluted air and support them to reduce that risk. Behavioural changes can help by using active travel on less polluted roads and avoiding wood burning stoves, but more powerful action is to lobby and vote for politicians to introduce changes and legislation that reduce the causes and promote solutions.
The GMC would have more impact in its primary mission to protect public health by promoting guidance on the responsibility of doctors to follow science-based directives from their professional colleges and advocate for clean air, than to sanction the few, who, driven by moral distress, choose to break the law.
Dr Heather Lambert Paediatrician, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Dr Mark Hayden Paediatrician, London
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