Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:39 pm on 13 February 2019.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The title is: air quality legislation fit for modern challenges. Now, I'm not sure whether I have ever mentioned before that I have been a doctor in Swansea for 35 years or so, with the challenges of lung health and heart health amongst the most common conditions that I continually deal with. The rates of asthma have been increasing in our children for decades, and there is no valid explanation, only the rates of air pollution that some children have to breathe regularly. And these small particles, the PM10 and PM2.5 particles, which come from diesel and petrol fumes, as well as the tyres of the vehicles distributing small grains of rubber and plastics to the air, and the nitrogen dioxide—that poisonous gas that comes from the burning of diesel—are all being breathed into the lungs. And some of these particles are so small—nano-particles, as they're called—that they not only reach the smallest tubes in our lungs, but can go immediately into the blood flow too and reach our hearts directly and cause a response in the muscle in the wall of the heart. Therefore, that is why this is a crisis—a crisis that has become more and more critical recently.