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Cleaner air, healthier hospitals: Implementing the UK's Clean Air Hospital Framework

Okeowo, Babatunde, Dixon, James, Entwistle, Jane A., James, Philip, Malone, David, Middlemass, Laura, Mills, Anna-Lisa, Namdeo, Anil and Deary, Michael E. (2025) Cleaner air, healthier hospitals: Implementing the UK's Clean Air Hospital Framework. Journal of Environmental Management, 391. p. 126468. ISSN 0301-4797

Item Type: Article

Abstract

National healthcare services significantly contribute to ambient air pollution and greenhouse gases, particularly through transport and energy generation. Hospitals bring together vulnerable patients in high-traffic settings often in urban areas where there are significant baseline concentrations of ambient pollutants. Therefore, there is a requirement for hospitals to look at ways of reducing their emissions of airborne pollutants, ideally within the framework of achieving net zero goals. This study details the initial implementation of the UK's Clean Air Hospital Framework (CAHF) at two major UK hospitals. CAHF is a proactive self-assessment tool designed to reduce the generation of air pollution from hospital activities. It comprises 215 compliance actions across seven key categories: travel, procurement, design & construction, energy generation, communication & training, outreach & leadership and local air quality. CAHF implementation has focused on sustainable travel options, parking policy, energy efficiency improvements, staff training, education, the adoption of green procurement policies and the incorporation of sustainable travel considerations into new infrastructure designs. Currently, the hospitals are more than half-way towards achieving their implementation goal. To monitor the future overall effectiveness of CAHF, a network of 32 NO2 diffusion tubes was set up across the hospital sites, together with continuous monitors for NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 measurement, and four indoor particulate matter monitors at each hospital. The monitoring programme was supplemented with the development of an ADMS-Urban dispersion model for the site, focussing on emissions from significant adjacent road networks. This study provides an evidence-based exemplar for the CAHF approach and provides a blueprint to support other hospitals to engage in this process.

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Uncontrolled Keywords: Air quality, Hospital, Health care, Particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Net zero, Clean air hospital framework (CAHF)
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Identifiers

Item ID: 19266
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.126468
ISSN: 0301-4797
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/19266
Official URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Anna-Lisa Mills: ORCID iD orcid.org/0009-0007-5625-2978
ORCID for Anil Namdeo: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0982-9590
ORCID for Michael E. Deary: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2370-1243

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 01 Aug 2025 15:08
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2025 15:08

Contributors

Author: Anna-Lisa Mills ORCID iD
Author: Anil Namdeo ORCID iD
Author: Michael E. Deary ORCID iD
Author: Babatunde Okeowo
Author: James Dixon
Author: Jane A. Entwistle
Author: Philip James
Author: David Malone
Author: Laura Middlemass

University Divisions

Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing

Subjects

Sciences > Environment
Sciences > Health Sciences

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