Two years after the World Health Organization labelled air pollution a global “public health emergency”, and the House of Commons environment committee used the same phrase to describe the situation in the UK, new evidence shows that breathing unsafe air causes a loss of intelligence, particularly in the over-64s. The research, carried out in China, showed that test scores declined when people breathed toxins including nitrogen dioxide and particulate, with language ability more affected than maths. This news, though alarming, is unlikely to change anything straight away. China has been engaged in a “war against pollution” for five years, while governments and policymakers around the world already have ample evidence that pollution is extremely harmful. Top of the list of dangers is the way it worsens heart and lung diseases including asthma and emphysema, while one study last year suggested a link to dementia.

The problem is both global and national: urbanisation and increasing car use mean that pollution is on the rise internationally, while the UK government is under huge pressure to clean up air that has broken EU legal limits for the past eight years. Western capitals do not feature in the WHO’s lists of the planet’s most polluted cities, and levels of most pollutants in the UK have fallen (though not ammonia, a byproduct of farming). But increased scientific understanding of the damage to health caused by gases such as nitrogen oxides makes inexcusable the complacency of which we have seen so much, both under the current Conservative government and its coalition predecessor.

London mayor Sadiq Khan’s “ultra low-emission zone”, which comes into force next year and will charge the most polluting vehicles to enter central London, looks set to be a game-changer. Government analysis shows clean air zones to be by far the most effective measure in reducing nitrogen oxides. But critics think it is still too timid, while leaders of other cities are calling for government funding to implement their own clean air zones, as well as a new clean air act to provide a national framework. Campaigners struggle to understand why the public outcry is not loud or angry enough to force the government to act, when air pollution is thought to be a factor in shortening the lives of 40,000 people in the UK every year. So do all those who worry about air pollution, among them parents anxious about the impact on growing lungs. The usual answer is cars, and the fact that even if people would like their cities to be cleaner, they don’t want restrictions on their freedom to drive.

It is imperative that we move beyond this stand-off. Recent history shows that when well-evidenced public health measures deliver benefits in improved safety and wellbeing, people accept them with little fuss. The 11-year-old ban on smoking in public places and 35-year-old law making seatbelts compulsory are good examples. While many people are against new rules in principle, trained as they have been by the rightwing press and politicians to be suspicious of the “nanny state”, when it comes to individual measures – such as manufacturers being obliged to tell them how much sugar is in their food – they are much more receptive.

Individual responsibility has a role to play in all this. Those of us who are able to should think about our choices to drive, walk, cycle, or use a wood-burning stove, just as we should be aware of what we eat and drink. But ministers’ relentless emphasis on personal choice and behaviour in recent years, combined with the arrival of genetic tests and activity trackers such as Fitbits, have occluded those areas of life in which, really, the individual is not the point. Air quality and the closely related question of urban transport is one of these areas. In July the family of nine-year-old Londoner Ella Kissi-Debrah applied to reopen an inquest into her death, with expert evidence that air pollution may have caused the asthma attack that killed her. Such tragic cases illuminate the extent to which already vulnerable people are the victims of the current inaction. Politicians at all levels must stop ducking and diving and take the measures that are necessary to protect the public’s health.