IoS campaign forces rethink on pollution

Britain's most senior experts are to examine the evidence that air pollution causes asthma and advise ministers on whether to crack down on emissions as the result of the IoS campaign.

The move comes as a top Department of Health official warned that levels of ozone – the gas linked to the disease in an important Californian study – will rise in towns and cities all over the country.

The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution will begin an investigation at ministers' requests. Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, and Yvette Cooper, the Public Health minister, asked them to look at the findings of the Californian study after they were publicised by this paper.

Officials in the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say "much will depend" on the verdict of the committee, which will report later this year. They added the Government "may well need to look again" at whether measures to tackle pollution are adequate.

Seven years ago, after a previous campaign on the issue by this paper, the committee concluded that pollution aggravated but did not cause the disease.

But its chairman, Professor John Ayres of Birmingham University, has praised the Californian study, saying it was "a thorough and very serious study that needs to be looked at very carefully".

News of the Government review came as Dr Bob Maynard, of the Department of Health's air pollution and noise unit, warned at a conference in London last week that ozone would increase in Britain's urban areas as other kinds of air pollution fell.