The UK’s leading health professionals are calling on the government to implement the biggest shake-up of air quality legislation for 60 years in an effort to tackle the country’s growing air pollution crisis.

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) – representing major medical bodies including the Royal College of Nursing, the British Medical Association and the BMJ – is demanding ministers introduce a new clean air act amid growing concern about the devastating health impacts of the country’s toxic air.

The move follows warnings from several major organisations including the World Health Organization, Unicef and the UN about the scale of the UK’s air pollution crisis.

Laurie Laybourn-Langton, director of UKHACC, said: “The UK’s dirty air crisis has gone on too long, inflicting a large cost on our health, with children particularly vulnerable. To date, the government’s response has been too slow and lacked ambition.”

He said the government must set out a policy agenda that is sufficiently robust to “deal with the scale of the problem, ensuring health is protected and air pollution levels are rapidly reduced, with support being given to those on the frontline, including councils and the NHS.

“Crucially, the actions needed to reduce air pollution are also those that improve our health anyway, including through helping more people cycle and walk instead of using cars.”

Air pollution, UKHACC says, contributes to an estimated 40,000 deaths each year in the UK and costs the economy an estimated £22bn annually.

Last week, the UN warned that the UK government was endangering people’s health by denying their right to clean air, and the world’s biggest children’s charity, Unicef, told the Guardian it had refocused its UK operation to tackle air pollution because of the scale of the “health crisis” facing young people in the country.

On Saturday the World Health Organization warned that air pollution was the “new tobacco”, causing 7 million deaths around the world and harming billions more.

UKHACC said that, as well as respiratory conditions such as asthma, emphysema and bronchiectasis, air pollution can cause developmental problems for children’s lungs, making them more vulnerable to these conditions in adulthood.

Other effects include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, strokes, dementia and reduced cognitive ability.

Rose Gallagher from the Royal College of Nursing said the UK should be “leading the way in tackling climate change” but that too little has been done.

“Nursing staff see first-hand patients suffering from exposure to air pollution,” she said, “often in urgent situations from aggravated asthma in children to exacerbation of long-term respiratory conditions in adults.”

She said clean air benefited everyone and would reduce the burden on the NHS.

“For the future health of the UK, the government’s duty to reduce air pollution must be enshrined in law,” she said.

UKHACC wants legally enforced air standards, governed by an independent statutory body to ensure consistently cleaner air across the UK, and the creation of an advisory group to advise government on air pollution, in much the same way as the Committee on Climate Change does on climate change issues.

It said a new clean air act – whether part of a new environment act or a standalone piece of legislation – needs to reduce air concentration levels to as close to zero as possible in the shortest amount of time.

The first Clean Air Act, in 1956, was implemented because the government could not ignore the Great London Smog, caused mainly by the use of coal.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs acknowledged air pollution was “the top environmental risk to human health in the UK” and added that although “air quality has improved significantly since 2010, we recognise there is more to do.”

“This is why we are taking comprehensive action through our £3.5bn plan to reduce harmful emissions and our ambitious new Clean Air Strategy which has been welcomed by the WHO.”

They said the forthcoming Environment Bill would “include provisions to improve air quality and ensure we leave our precious environment in a better state than we found it.”

But UKHACC insisted more urgent action was needed.

Prof Dame Parveen Kumar, chair of the British Medical Association’s board of science, said the move by UKHACC was an important moment in the fight against air pollution.

“There is no time to lose to improve air quality,” Kumar said, “as the scale of the problem is such that it requires a significant legislative overhaul if we are to see real lasting changes.”

UKHACC said air pollution and climate change were intrinsically linked with both exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels.

It pointed out that pollution from road transport is a major source of the most serious pollutants and called on the government to:

• bring forward the ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040 to 2030.

• increase investment in active transport to at least £10 per person each year, compared with about £4.30 currently.

• expand clean air zones in towns and cities and provide financial incentives to households and businesses to towards more sustainable forms of travel.

Prof Jonathan Grigg of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said: “Air pollution is an invisible killer in adults, and in children its invisible toxins get into their bodies through the lungs, stunting lung growth, causing asthma and adversely influencing other organs.”

Grigg said the government, employers and schools must “encourage and facilitate better use of public transport and active travel options like walking, scooting and cycling to school.

“More than 4.5 million children living in the UK are affected by toxic levels of air pollution and it is a disgrace that, in 2018, parents and guardians have to worry about their children’s exposure when playing outside or walking to school.”