Breathing toxic air is biggest concern of London’s children

Children in London have identified poor air quality as the biggest climate change concern where they live, according to a report released on Friday.

More than a quarter of young people, aged from four to 18, said that breathing toxic air was their most pressing worry, compared with 16.5 per cent of children in the rest of Britain.

Limited access to food and water was the second most concerning repercussion of climate change to children in London, the results of the study by VotesforSchools and UN children’s agency Unicef revealed.

The survey of some 46,000 UK children, completed ahead of the COP26 summit, is one of the biggest into what young people think about climate change.

Two-thirds of those in London believe it will affect their rights and that governments have the biggest responsibility to tackle the crisis.

One 14-year-old said: “Some of our rights include living in a clean and safe environment and if pollution rates increase this will become impossible.”

Unicef UK supporter Dafne Keen, 16, right, said young people would have to deal with the problems unless something is done to combat the crisis now.

The actress, who starred as Lyra Belacqua in the BBC series His Dark Materials, said: “Climate change is incredibly worrying for our generation, who have done the least to cause the crisis and yet are the ones most at risk.

“Young people are going to be handed a problem that will begin to drastically impact our lives if it isn’t resolved by those with the power to do so now.”