London and Paris just proved clean air policy works
Environmental policy almost never gets to claim a body count in reverse. This one just did, for children’s lungs.
For five years, researchers tracked the lungs of more than 3,400 primary school children in London and Luton, a town thirty kilometres up the road with no low emission zone of its own. In 2019, the London kids had measurably worse lung function than their Luton peers, a straightforward marker of pollution stunting their growth. By 2024, that gap was gone.
The study, published in The Lancet Public Health in August 2026, is the strongest evidence yet that air pollution damage in children isn’t necessarily permanent.