This is not the first time that the "air quality" talking point has hit headlines in recent years.

Back in June of 2023, during the Canadian wildfires "crisis", we saw warnings about air pollution. Then last week, they repeated the story again.

There was also the "ban gas stoves" push, which evolved into a compromise to "regulate indoor air quality".

Then there was the "wood-burning stoves cause cancer" and the call to ban them in the UK in winter 2024.

And just a couple of weeks ago, as mentioned in the most recent This Week in the New Normal, a different report was published warning about the UK's "toxic air", which Christ Whitty called "the most important environmental threat to health".

In a brand new research paper, we're told that poor air quality is linked to heart disease, in another, from just yesterday, it was lung cancer in non-smokers. Before that, it was early on-set dementia. Or depression.

Alongside the "serious issue" propaganda, there's the set dressing, the white noise fluff stories that sell the idea by treating it like an unquestioned assumption. Articles telling you how to improve our home office air quality, the ten best bargain HEPA filters, 5 easy tips to freshen your air quality at home.

You know the kind of thing.

Accompanying this is a flood of "reviews" (or rather, verbose advertisements) for new "smart" air monitors, which are about to make a very short list of very predictable companies a LOT of money.

In short, it has been apparent for some time that "air quality" was going to become a "problem" requiring a "solution".

Enter this report – "Making Britain's air cleaner, healthier and better to breathe: A blueprint for government action on clean air"

But what kind of "government action" are they talking about?

Let's take a look and find out.

New legislation

The first "recommendation" in the report is a new "Clean Air Act", which they would dub "Ella's Law" after a young girl who died of asthma in 2013 and was the first person to have "pollution" listed on their death certificate in the UK.

Pro-tip: Always be suspicious of a law that uses someone's name like this.

"Ella's Law" would seek to make "the right to breathe clean air" a protected right…