The air pollution from wood burning in homes is responsible for more than £1bn a year in health-related damages in the UK and €10bn (£8.5bn) across the EU, according to a report.

The analysis from the European Public Health Alliance found the total costs of early deaths, illness and lost work resulting from outdoor air pollution produced by all home heating was €29bn a year.

Wood burning was the biggest single cause of these costs, accounting for 54% of the total in the UK and 40% in the EU. This is despite wood stoves producing only 11% of heat in UK homes and 14% in the EU. The report combines burning wood in stoves and on open fires: in the UK two-thirds of people use stoves.

The researchers said their cost estimates were conservative because lack of data prevented them from including the impact of indoor air pollution from heating.

Compared with transport, regulators have largely neglected heating and cooking as sources of air pollution, the EPHA said. The report found that heat pumps and solar water heaters produced no air pollution at homes using them.

“It is clearer than ever that burning biomass and fossil fuels at home is not only an environmental problem, but also a major health problem,” said Milka Sokolović, the EPHA director general. “The solution, obviously, lies in ensuring that homes are powered by clean renewables. As people are grappling with high energy prices, we must avoid quick and dirty solutions.”

Air pollution is the single biggest environmental risk to health, causing millions of early deaths a year globally. In the EU, just one of pollutants, small particles under 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5), is blamed for 300,000 deaths a year. A comprehensive global review in 2019 found that air pollution may be damaging every organ in the human body.

Some care homes have “no choice” but to allow workers who have Covid to deliver care, a public health official said.

According to Public Health England cases are rising the fastest in Somerset.

As a result, care homes in the county are struggling to safely staff their services and schools are seeing a rise in staff sickness.

Somerset Council said ensuring vulnerable residents received care was “lower risk” than them being infected.

Health officials advised care workers to continue working only if they wore PPE and felt well enough.

Council public health consultant Alison Bell said: “In some cases, we have no choice but to have people who are testing positive delivering care to people in Somerset.

“That risk is actually less than that person not receiving care.”

She said the Omicron variant was more transmissible and people were getting re-infected with it, some within a matter of weeks.

“The knock-on effect of there being so much Covid is that workers that we really need to deliver essential services are getting sick,” Ms Bell added.

She said some schools in the county had had to go to remote learning due to an increase in staff sickness.

“Its really difficult to manage at the moment,” she added.

Public Health England is to be replaced by a new agency that will specifically deal with protecting the country from pandemics, according to a report.

The Sunday Telegraph claims Health Secretary Matt Hancock will this week announce a new body modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute.

Ministers have reportedly been unhappy with the way PHE has responded to the coronavirus crisis.

The government was contacted by the BBC but declined to comment on the report.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Public Health England have played an integral role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic.

“We have always been clear that we must learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both as we continue to deal with Covid-19 and to respond to any future public health threat.”

The Telegraph reports that Mr Hancock will merge the NHS Test and Trace scheme with the pandemic response work of PHE.

The paper said the new body could be called the National Institute for Health Protection and would become “effective” in September, but the change would not be fully completed until the spring.

The Robert Koch Institute, which the new body will reportedly be based on, is an independent agency that has taken control of Germany’s response to the pandemic.

Earlier this month, the government brought in a new way of counting daily coronavirus deaths in England following concerns that the method used by PHE overstated them.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also said the country’s response to Covid-19 could have been done “differently” and the government needed to learn lessons.

Every building contains radon but the levels are usually low. The chances of a higher level depend on the type of ground. Public Health England has published a map showing where high levels are more likely. The darker the colour the greater the chance of a higher level. The chance is less than one home in a hundred in the white areas and greater than one in three in the darkest areas.

Responding to a report by Pulse Magazine which suggests that nine out of 10 councils have reduced spending on sexual health, alcohol misuse and weight management services this year, Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said:

“These findings are not unexpected. Despite budget reductions, councils are determined to maintain vital public health services to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives, but the reality is that many local authorities are having to make difficult decisions on these key services, including stopping them altogether.

“Councils are having to carefully consider how best they can spend their public health funding, which has been reduced by £600 million from 2015/16 to 2019/20 by central government, to maximise cost effectiveness and improve health outcomes.

“Early intervention and prevention work by councils to tackle teenage pregnancy, child obesity, physical inactivity, sexually transmitted infections and substance misuse, is vital to improve the public’s health. Not only does it reduce the risk of people having their lives shortened by conditions such as heart and liver disease, cancer, and Type 2 diabetes, but it also keeps the pressure off the NHS and adult social care.

“We have repeatedly argued that reductions to councils’ public health budgets is short-sighted and needs to be reversed otherwise they will undermine the objectives we all share to improve the public’s health.

More people will become ill as a direct result of the government cutting spending on public health, which will put the NHS under further strain, a parliamentary report on Wednesday warns.

Peers on a House of Lords select committee urged citizens to do more to demonstrate personal responsibility – their “common duty” – to live healthily in order to help preserve the NHS as a tax-funded system that is free at the point of use.

They blame “the short-sightedness of successive governments” for leaving the NHS underfunded, understaffed and woefully unprepared for the huge pressures now bearing down on it.

In a strongly worded report, the House of Lords select committee on the long-term sustainability of the NHS claims that cuts of £531m to public health budgets in England during this parliament could backfire badly. “Continued cuts to the public health budget are not only shortsighted but counterproductive. There is a grave risk that the burden of disease will increase if these cuts continue, a trend which is bound to result in a greater strain on all services,” it says.