Frank Kelly | |
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| Born | Northern Ireland |
| Known for | Health effects of air pollution |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Physiology |
| Institutions | |
| Website | Official website  |
Francis J. Kelly is a British professor of community health and policy and Head of the Environmental Research Group (a global centre dedicated to air pollution research) at Imperial College London. [1] [2] He is an authority on the health effects of air pollution. [3] [4] [5]
Kelly obtained his first degree from Queen's University Belfast, before taking a Ph.D. in physiology there as well. He then joined Pennsylvania State University, as a postdoctoral fellow. After working in the United States, he returned to the UK as a lecturer at Southampton University. During the early part of his career, his research focused on free-radical biology and human disease, and lung damage in premature babies and cystic fibrosis patients. [6]
In 1992, Kelly moved to London and developed a new research interest in the effect of air pollution on lungs and respiratory health. He became a Senior Lecturer at St Thomas’ Hospital, where his research interests included the health effects of vitamin E, [7] before moving to King's College, London, where he was Professor of Environmental Health and Director of the Environmental Research Group. [6] Kelly and his group transferred to Imperial College in 2020. [8] His current work includes WellHome, a large study of how indoor air pollutants affect childhood asthma in urban environments. [9] [10]
Kelly works with the World Health Organization on air pollution issues and is a member of the Health Effects Institute (HEI) Review Committee. He has also served as Chairman of the UK Department of Health Expert Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), President of the European Society for Free Radical Research, and Chairman of the British Association for Lung Research. [1]
Kelly has published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers. [11]
Kelly won the 2019 Royal Society of Chemistry Toxicology Award for "outstanding research into free radical and antioxidant toxicological mechanisms relevant to pulmonary toxicity". [12] Also that year, he shared the Elsevier Haagen-Smit Prize with Julia Fussell for a paper on the toxicity of particulate air pollution. [13] He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018 [14] and became an honorary fellow of the Institute of Air Quality Management in 2021. [15] Kelly was made a CBE in January 2025 "for services to air pollution research and to human health". [16]
Kelly is a frequent media commentator on air quality issues, such as pollution in London, [5] [17] [18] pollution caused by road transport, [4] [19] whether a shift to electric cars can tackle air quality, [20] the use of taxes to improve air quality, [21] indoor air pollution, [22] air quality in other parts of the world, [23] [24] and the effectiveness of air pollution limits and guidelines. [25]
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause harm. Pollution can take the form of any substance or energy. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
Smog, or smoke fog, is a type of intense air pollution. The word "smog" was coined in the early 20th century, and is a portmanteau of the words smoke and fog to refer to smoky fog due to its opacity, and odor. The word was then intended to refer to what was sometimes known as pea soup fog, a familiar and serious problem in London from the 19th century to the mid-20th century, where it was commonly known as a London particular or London fog. This kind of visible air pollution is composed of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxide, ozone, smoke and other particulates. Man-made smog is derived from coal combustion emissions, vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, forest and agricultural fires and photochemical reactions of these emissions.
Indoor air quality (IAQ) is the air quality within buildings and structures. Poor indoor air quality due to indoor air pollution is known to affect the health, comfort, and well-being of building occupants. It has also been linked to sick building syndrome, respiratory issues, reduced productivity, and impaired learning in schools. Common pollutants of indoor air include: secondhand tobacco smoke, air pollutants from indoor combustion, radon, molds and other allergens, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, legionella and other bacteria, asbestos fibers, carbon dioxide, ozone and particulates.
The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, in December 1952. A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.
Environmental health is the branch of public health concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment affecting human health. To effectively control factors that may affect health, the requirements that must be met to create a healthy environment must be determined. The major sub-disciplines of environmental health are environmental science, toxicology, environmental epidemiology, and environmental and occupational medicine.
A bioindicator is any species or group of species whose function, population, or status can reveal the qualitative status of the environment. The most common indicator species are animals. For example, copepods and other small water crustaceans that are present in many water bodies can be monitored for changes that may indicate a problem within their ecosystem. Bioindicators can tell us about the cumulative effects of different pollutants in the ecosystem and about how long a problem may have been present, which physical and chemical testing cannot.
C. Arden Pope III is an American professor of economics at Brigham Young University and one of the world's foremost experts in environmental science. He received his B.S. from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1978 and his Ph.D. in economics and statistics from Iowa State University in 1981. Although his research includes many papers on topics in the fields in which he was trained—environmental economics, resource economics, and agricultural economics—he is better known for his cross-disciplinary work in environmental epidemiology and public health. He is world-renowned for his seminal work on the effects of particulate air pollution on mortality and health. His articles have helped establish the connection between air pollution and health problems, including cancer, cardiovascular, and pulmonary disease. These research findings have influenced environmental policy in the United States and Europe, contributing to the establishment of emission standards for particulate matter pollution.
Air pollution is the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the environment. Air pollution can be chemical, physical or biological. There are many different types of air pollutants, such as gases, particulates and biological molecules. Air pollution can cause diseases, allergies, and even death; it can also cause harm to animals and crops and damage the natural environment or built environment. Air pollution can occur naturally or be caused by human activities.
Sir Andrew Paul Haines is a British epidemiologist and academic. He was the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001 to 2010.
Air pollution in the United Kingdom has long been considered a significant health issue, and it causes numerous other environmental problems such as damage to buildings, forests, and crops. Many areas, including major cities like London, are found to be significantly and regularly above legal and recommended pollution levels. Air pollution in the UK is a major cause of diseases such as asthma, lung disease, stroke, cancer, and heart disease, and it costs the health service, society, and businesses over £20 billion each year. Outdoor pollution alone is estimated to cause 40,000 early deaths each year, which is about 8.3% of deaths.
Particulates or atmospheric particulate matter are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. The term aerosol refers to the particulate/air mixture, as opposed to the particulate matter alone, though it is sometimes defined as a subset of aerosol terminology. Sources of particulate matter can be natural or anthropogenic. They have impacts on climate and precipitation that adversely affect human health, in ways additional to direct inhalation.
The effects of climate change on human health are profound because they increase heat-related illnesses and deaths, respiratory diseases, and the spread of infectious diseases. There is widespread agreement among researchers, health professionals and organizations that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.
Air pollution measurement is the process of collecting and measuring the components of air pollution, notably gases and particulates. The earliest devices used to measure pollution include rain gauges, Ringelmann charts for measuring smoke, and simple soot and dust collectors known as deposit gauges. Modern air pollution measurement is largely automated and carried out using many different devices and techniques. These range from simple absorbent test tubes known as diffusion tubes through to highly sophisticated chemical and physical sensors that give almost real-time pollution measurements, which are used to generate air quality indexes.
Anna Louise Hansell is a British physician who is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Director of the Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability at the University of Leicester. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hansell studied the relationship between pollution and COVID-19.
Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) is a group of scientific experts who provide independent and authoritative advice to the UK government on the health effects of air pollution. Its core members are typically senior academics or professionals drawn from fields such as atmospheric chemistry, environmental health, epidemiology, and toxicology; a single lay member helps to ensure the committee's technical work is accessible to the public.
Particulate pollution is pollution of an environment that consists of particles suspended in some medium. There are three primary forms: atmospheric particulate matter, marine debris, and space debris. Some particles are released directly from a specific source, while others form in chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Particulate pollution can be derived from either natural sources or anthropogenic processes.
Research indicates that living in areas of high pollution has serious long term health effects. Living in these areas during childhood and adolescence can lead to diminished mental capacity and an increased risk of brain damage. People of all ages who live in high pollution areas for extended periods place themselves at increased risk of various neurological disorders. Both air pollution and heavy metal pollution have been implicated as having negative effects on central nervous system (CNS) functionality. The ability of pollutants to affect the neurophysiology of individuals after the structure of the CNS has become mostly stabilized is an example of negative neuroplasticity.
Martin Lloyd Williams was a Welsh chemist and environmental scientist who made important contributions to the science of air pollution and its incorporation into public policy in the United Kingdom. Williams was one of the first scientists to recognize the harmful health effects of ground-level ozone, in papers published in Nature in the mid-1970s, and one of the first to study vehicle emissions in the real world. He also established the first systematic programme to produce inventories of UK national air pollution emissions.
David Fowler is a British environmental physicist, recognized as an authority on atmospheric pollution. He specializes in micrometeorology, the land-atmosphere exchange of trace gases and particles, and the effects of pollutants on vegetation.
Eloise Ann Marais is a South African chemist who is a professor at University College London. She leads the UCL Atmospheric Composition and Air Quality group, which develop complex models to understand human influence on air quality.
World expert on air quality, Prof Frank Kelly from Imperial College London, says expanding ULEZ will improve the health of Londoners. "There is nowhere in London still that does meet the WHO air quality guidelines so that means everywhere you go the air you are breathing is having some impact on your health," he said.
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