Following Zoe Williams’s article on pollution in the capital I’d like to reassure readers that the recent spate of alarmist claims are ridiculous and taken out of context (Welcome to London – the planet’s most toxic town, 8 July). Read more @ the Guardian
Emissions research “has found nitrogen dioxide concentrations on Oxford Street to be worse than they are anywhere else on Earth”, Williams says. Anyone who has visited Beijing, Mexico City or Delhi really knows what bad air pollution looks and feels like. Pollution levels in London are in fact lower than in many other world cities: average levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from monitoring sites near busy roads in Stuttgart, Paris, Munich, Rome and Milan are all higher than those recorded for London.
Some
cities place their monitoring stations in vast green parks or
traffic-free courtyards, hence the lower figures they report. We do the
responsible thing and place our monitoring stations directly in the most
polluted roads. Most experts do not rank locations, precisely because
of the variability between sites, and as such it’s misleading to talk
about a “worst location”.
Even though it was estimated in 2010 that there were 50,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, says Williams, “pollution still isn’t taken seriously as a health issue”. At City Hall we are the first to admit that London’s air quality is not good enough. Buses and taxis are major contributors to air pollution on busy roads, so we’ve retired 900 of the oldest buses, and are putting 1,700 ultra-low emission hybrid buses on our streets. Removing 3,000 of the oldest, most polluting taxis met initial opposition but we have pushed on: from 2018 all new taxis will be capable of zero emissions.
We’ve also been busy making 400,000 homes and public buildings energy-efficient and have established a £20m fund to tackle air quality hotspots.
We’ve reduced emissions of NOx by 20% and particulates by 15% since the mayor was elected, and we have halved the number of Londoners living in areas that break EU limits for NO2. The mayor is now drawing up plans for an ultra-low emission zone from 2020, which no other city has ever proposed. This is expected to more than halve emissions of NOx and dangerous particles.
“The fact that only 2%
of [children] cycle to school, compared with 50% in the Netherlands, is
attributable to the fact that we don’t take road safety seriously across
the country,” says Williams. City Hall has invested millions into
reclaiming public space for pedestrians and cyclists. As a cyclist I’ve
personally appreciated these changes, and the £1bn investment into
cycling, which has seen a 55% increase since the mayor was elected. And
with more measures, continuous monitoring and a pollution awareness
campaign set to launch this autumn, I hope any reasonable observer would
agree that London is in the vanguard of improving air quality.
Emissions research “has found nitrogen dioxide concentrations on Oxford Street to be worse than they are anywhere else on Earth”, Williams says. Anyone who has visited Beijing, Mexico City or Delhi really knows what bad air pollution looks and feels like. Pollution levels in London are in fact lower than in many other world cities: average levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from monitoring sites near busy roads in Stuttgart, Paris, Munich, Rome and Milan are all higher than those recorded for London.
Even though it was estimated in 2010 that there were 50,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, says Williams, “pollution still isn’t taken seriously as a health issue”. At City Hall we are the first to admit that London’s air quality is not good enough. Buses and taxis are major contributors to air pollution on busy roads, so we’ve retired 900 of the oldest buses, and are putting 1,700 ultra-low emission hybrid buses on our streets. Removing 3,000 of the oldest, most polluting taxis met initial opposition but we have pushed on: from 2018 all new taxis will be capable of zero emissions.
We’ve also been busy making 400,000 homes and public buildings energy-efficient and have established a £20m fund to tackle air quality hotspots.
We’ve reduced emissions of NOx by 20% and particulates by 15% since the mayor was elected, and we have halved the number of Londoners living in areas that break EU limits for NO2. The mayor is now drawing up plans for an ultra-low emission zone from 2020, which no other city has ever proposed. This is expected to more than halve emissions of NOx and dangerous particles.
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