Three weeks ago, Hilary Judd's picture of suburban bliss was shattered.

The 46-year-old mum has called Manchester home for 20 years, building a career lecturing at MMU. She started a family in Whalley Range with her partner, and they have two sons, Arthur and a six-year-old Dessie.

Her home on Victoria Road, a side street defined by neat hedges and Edwardian villas, might seem like the perfect place to bring a child up.

But something invisible is now making her and Dessie's lives harder — so much so she's considering leaving Manchester altogether.

"We had an incident three weeks ago where Dessie could just not catch his breath," Hilary explained. "I managed to calm him down.

"He could not lie down and sleep. When you cannot breathe, you panic and you hyperventilate. I was able to reassure him, he was able to breathe, but he was very upset and scared to lie down because every time he laid down, it started again.

"He had a lot of mucus in his airways."

Hilary developed adult asthma a decade ago, which meant she felt like she had enough experience managing the condition so she did not need to take her boy to hospital. 

But a trip to the GP a few days later confirmed he now has the condition she 'never wanted him to have': Asthma.

Now, with her family's home a short distance from major thoroughfare Withington Road and wood burning stoves filling the neighbourhood with smoke in the winter, she believes the quality of Manchester's air could impact Dessie's life.

"It feels like a dirty old town," continued Hilary.

"I have a car but I rarely drive it, I cycle and I can taste [pollution]. When you do not have it, like Deansgate, it tastes and smells different.

"It makes you think about moving very seriously. I feel like I am doing him a disservice. There's nothing worse than your child not being able to breathe."

Hilary is a member of Manchester Mums for Lungs, a campaign group that called on the government and Andy Burnham to bring Greater Manchester's pollution limits in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations on Thursday (June 19).

In the UK, the legal limit for pollution is 40 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide in one cubic metre of air. The WHO limit is just 10.

The mayor has a new non-charging clean air plan, brought in to replace a clean air zone which would have charged some drivers to use Greater Manchester's roads before it was scrapped before it began amid a huge backlash.

But a report from the mayor's office, released when the new clean air plan was announced, revealed pollution levels will be at 40.3 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide per cubic metre on Regent Road and Rochdale Road on the edge of Manchester city centre — effectively meaning the plan complies with the law by rounding figures down, which the government permits.

Liz Godfrey, a mum of two who runs Manchester Mums for Lungs, also called for more restrictions on the 'dirtiest diesels'.

She said: "We still have a huge amount of dirty diesel because there's no incentive not to buy them secondhand. The majority of Greater Manchester is four times over the WHO limit. 

"The plan is to scrape under the 40. If it gets to 40.4 it's classed as we are meeting it.

"We are calling on the government and Andy Burnham to have these ambitions. We see the current clean air plan as a starting point. It's not job done."

The group's calls come on the day a letter signed by 400 NHS medics was delivered to Downing Street asking for more stringent action on pollution.

In response to Mums for Lungs' calls, a Clean Air Greater Manchester spokesperson said: "Poor air quality is a national health emergency, and we are committed to cleaning up the air that we breathe and making the city-region a cleaner and healthier place to live in.

"Air pollution is continuing to improve in Greater Manchester, and we are making real inroads to cleaning up the air we all breathe through investment in the Bee Network. This includes the government investing £2.5b in Greater Manchester public transport, paving the way for a thousand new electric buses and future expansions of Metrolink, which is already powered by renewable energy, as well as the integration of local rail lines into the Bee Network.

"We're seeing the results, with more and more people choosing public transport and active travel over the car. Since taking back control of local buses, we now have over 300 electric buses running on Greater Manchester's roads. This is a huge step forward in our long-term ambition to deliver the UK's first fully integrated, zero-emission public transport network by 2030."

A government spokesperson added: "Air pollution is a public health issue, and we are committed to tackling this issue across the country.

"We have already provided £575 million to support Local Authorities to improve air quality and are developing a series of interventions to reduce emissions so that everyone's exposure to air pollution is reduced."