What happens to people’s health when air pollution is reduced?

Failing crops, wildfires and overloaded health systems are focusing minds on the local impacts of our changing climate.

While carbon emissions reduction is normally framed as having a global benefit rather than a local gain, studies published in 2025 and 2026 from Greece have added to growing evidence that cutting coal use and air pollution can provide immediate health benefits to local communities.

Through the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, West Macedonia became Europe’s leading area for lignite mining. Much of this poor-quality coal was burned in the region’s six power stations. In 2005 these supplied about 60% of Greece’s electricity.

Shutting mines and the clean-up and closure of power stations provided an opportunity to study what happens to people’s health when air pollution is reduced.

Summarising their findings, the researchers concluded: “When the air cleared, fewer patients filled the cardiac wards. This regional transition serves as a microcosm of what can be achieved globally through sustained emission reductions.”

Cuts in air pollution between 2011 and 2021 were accompanied by a large reduction in people being admitted to hospital with heart problems. At the area’s main hospitals, serving more than 200,000 people, wintertime admissions for heart problems dropped by between 22% and 42%. This contrasts with an increase of around 2% in a hospital serving a rural area 50-100km away. The proportion of people with heart attacks and severe heart rhythm problems also fell, dropping to about one third of their 2011 levels in one of the study hospitals.

Wintertime sulphur dioxide dropped by more than 90% approaching the limits of detection. Particle pollution improved too.

A separate social attitudes survey by the University of West Macedonia revealed high agreement that decarbonisation had led to improved air pollution but there were regional differences in the perceived impacts of green investments.

Like the West Macedonia power plant closures, the 2016 closure of a coal processing plant near Pittsburgh in the US resulted in an immediate reduction in air pollution for the local communities and reduced the number of people admitted to hospital with heart problems. Here, sulphur dioxide decreased by 90%, arsenic by 66% and particle pollution also improved. There was an immediate 42% decrease in emergency room visits for heart problems and further declines in the three years that followed, until the study finished in 2019.

Low emission and clean air zones are also being followed by measurable health improvements. These schemes aim to reduce air pollution by discouraging the use of older more polluting vehicles.

The introduction of the clean air zone in Bradford, West Yorkshire, was followed by a reduction of about 25% in GP visits for heart and breathing problems.

London’s ultra-low emission zone was accompanied by an improvement in children’s lung health and fewer children with clinically impaired lung function. For adult’s in central London there was a 3% reduction in annual trends for emergency admissions, including an 8% reduction for heart problems and a 6% reduction for breathing problems.