FOI/2025/26/179
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| Reference | FOI/2025/26/179 |
|---|---|
| Description | Air pollution exposure |
| Date requested | 11/03/2025 |
| Attachments | N/A |
Request
I'm writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following.
Please provide the following information, broken down by month, between January 2020 and July 2025 inclusive. If this is not possible, please instead provide it broken down by calendar year, 2020 to 2025 inclusive.
1. The number of times a patient was admitted where exposure to air pollution (International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10) code Z581)* was recorded as a contributing factor to the admission.
(* I understand this is the code used by NHS trusts to log exposure to air pollution, but if your trust uses a different code or some other system, please still provide the relevant data)
1a. If possible, please tell me what the primary diagnosis was for each of these admissions.
(For clarity, I want to know total numbers admitted with each primary diagnosis — for example, if 45 people were admitted with a primary diagnosis of asthma where exposure to air pollution was identified as a contributing factor.)
2. Please tell me how many of the patients in question 1 subsequently died in hospital.
If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request.
If you can identify any ways that my request could be refined I would be grateful for any further advice and assistance.
If you are able to supply some of this information more quickly than other items, please supply each item when you can rather than delay everything until it is all available.
If it is necessary for any reason to redact any information, please redact the minimum necessary and send me the rest of the material, explaining the legal grounds for each redaction.
If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me via email and I will be very happy to clarify what I am asking for and discuss the request.
Response
We do not record ICD-10 and we do not have hospitals. We certainly do not hold this information in the clinical data warehouse. This is aimed primarily at acute trusts.
After careful consideration, we can confirm that the Trust does not hold this information.