Air Pollution - Let's not "dilly-dally"

Parents from Canonbury School with Jenny Jones campaigning for clean air

Yesterday I attended a Camden and Islington Air Quality Summit at Camden Town Hall. The Council Chamber was packed to hear what health, transport and air quality experts had to say.  It was good to see Councillor West Leader of Islington Council, who has recently been persuaded of the serious impacts of transport on the health of residents but a pity she was unable to stay for all the presentations as there is much for Islington Council to do.

We learnt that London air is polluted with emissions from vehicle exhausts and from minute particles from tyre and brake disk wear. On average, the lives of Londoners are being shortened by 11.5 years because of air pollution, streets like the Euston Road are breaking European and World Health Organisation limits many times over and more than 4,000 people are dying in the capital each year because of poor air quality.

Worryingly, children are the worst affected. They breath in twice as much pollution as adults because their mouths are closer to the level of vehicle exhaust pipes where concentrations of pollutants are highest. Children also suck in more polluted air than adults because their energy levels are higher, their lungs are bigger in relation to their bodies than adults and their lungs are not fully developed. Professor Frank Kelly, Director of the Environmental Research Group at Kings College, was stark in his description of a generation of children living near busy roads who will reach adulthood without ever developing full lung function.  This is disproportionately the case for children of lower income and ethnic minority families.

Professor Kelly was very clear that there is a solution.  "We simply have to remove the source of the pollution"  and went on "the more we dilly-dally on this, the more people will suffer respiratory problems".  

The presentation from Isabel Dedring, Deputy Mayor for Transport, made clear that Boris and Transport for London are "dilly dallying". Having just seen images of diesel particulates embedded in a child's lung, the Mayor's programme of sticking pollution to the ground near the air pollution monitors on Euston Road appeared utterly inadequate. The lack of ambition in tackling this serious health emergency is shocking and tragic in equal measure and was brilliantly illustrated by the TfL projections that even by 2050 we will not be breathing clean air. As Professor Kelly made clear, there is a solution.  We just need "to remove the source of the pollution" and that must mean fewer and cleaner cars on our roads.

Why are we so sanguine about this serious health risk? Many of us know children with asthma and others suffering lung or cardio vascular diseases and yet we continue to allow pollution creating vehicles to drive unimpeded through built up areas where many people will breath in the poisonous air.  The scale of damage to health from air pollution puts the dangers of alcohol, smoking, drugs and road traffic collisions in the shade.  There seems to be a collective lack of outrage and a paucity of imagination: We just need "to remove the source of the pollution".  London could be so much better if only we dared to imagine a city with fewer vehicles, cleaner air and a more walkable and cycle-able, people-friendly street environment.

Air Quality Monitoring in Highbury

This is a picture story of the very long day Andrew Myer (Islington Green Party), Louise Francis (Mapping for Change) and I spent installing diffusion tubes and wiping windows all over Highbury.  I don't have pictures for every grid square, but have included as many as I have available.  There are 28 grid squares covering the area along and either side of the A1201 from St Paul's Rd to Finsbury Park (Highbury Grove, Highbury Park, Blackstock Rd).  This road is typical of many Islington main roads.

The diffusion tubes were measuring Nitrogen Dioxide levels and the window wipes were analysed to provide information about heavy metals in dust.  Islington Greens provided the local knowledge to assist with locations for tubes and Mapping for Change provided the scientific know how, access to labs and most importantly the results.

Air pollution is difficult to measure because of the wide range of variables that may have to be considered when trying to be clear about what is required as an outcome.

However it is equally something that concerns ordinary people, especially when they live in an area they consider to be polluted.

Many people are rightly worried about London’s air. But air pollution can be hard to measure, and most air quality monitoring carried out by local councils relies on measurements from a few fixed measuring points. These often fail to reflect the ways in which air quality varies across small distances. There are many factors that affect our air, which makes the need for better measurement even more important.

Mapping for Change is a social enterprise which is jointly owned by University College London (UCL) and the charity, London 21.  It is giving communities the resources and support to monitor local environmental conditions as part of a new research project based at UCL. The data we gathered in Highbury will help create a clearer picture of air quality at the very local level. This will inform us all and help encourage the Mayor and Islington Council to take effective measures to improve the quality of our environment.

The aim of the activity is to collect baseline information about air quality, with the hope that ongoing monitoring will follow these preliminary activities. It is also hoped that these activities will lead to an increase in public awareness and understanding of the health impacts of air pollution and will help us to mitigate those impacts and adapt to reduce them. 

If you'd like to find out more, do come to our public meeting on Monday 28th November from 7.00pm - 8.15pm at Highbury Grove School. We'll be sharing the Highbury results and discussing how to reduce air pollution in Highbury and elsewhere.

Grid 22 Oasis Cafe - the first to go up. Start of a very long day.  Began at 10.30am and finished by torchlight at 8.30pm, having walked the length and breadth of Highbury.

Grid 24 Outside 13 Baalbec Rd.

Grid 24 Highbury Grove School had to remember which corner we wiped.

Grid 24 outside Highbury Grove School.

Grid 25 Back of Highbury Grove School, Highbury New Park.

Grid 25 Back of Highbury Grove School, Highbury New Park.

Grid 23 Aberdeen Lane

Grid 20 Window wiping at Raymond's Newsagent, H.ighbury Barn.

Grid 20 The wipe

Grid 20 Highbury Barn attaching diffusion tube 

Grid 20 Attaching diffusion tube by Highbury Barn Square 

Grid 18 Caroline's window 

Grid 18 set back from main road at ankle height.

Grid 18 Tube set at child height, right by main road, hidden by undergrowth. This tube had a very high reading. 

Grid 19 Outside Highbury Grange Doctor's Surgery.

Grid 15 Window Wiping bus shelter by Mount Anvil development on National Children's home site.

Grid 15 Window Wiping bus shelter by Mount Anvil development on National Children's home site.

Grid 15 We were wiping the back of the bus shelter away from the road side, but still picked up loads of particles. 

Grid 15 For context - lots of large lorries delivering and idling engines. 

Grid 16 Northolme Rd opposite no 6

Grid 12 Window wiping at Cinnamon Village Cafe. 

Grid 13 Lamp post to left of church gate where Highbury Quadrant splits in two at roundabout. 

Diffusion tube in situ. 

Grid 10 Lamp column between 12 and 14 Herrick Rd. 

Grid 6 Corner of Brownswood and Willberforce Roads.  

Grid 2 Junction Blackstock Rd and Somerfield Rd.  A window at waist height.

Grid 2 The wipe was dirtiest of all that day.

Grid 1 Cafe Venezia at junction of Rock St and St Thomas' Rd, opposite Finsbury Park Mosque.

Grid 1 Diffusion tube on lampost outside Cafe Venezia at junction of Rock St and St Thomas' Rd, opposite Finsbury Park Mosque.

Fence used as community noticeboard in Grid 4.

Grid 4 (?) outside 6 - 8 Plimsoll Rd 

Grid 5 Outside Ambler School

Grid 9 window wiping at 164 BlackStock Rd, Prime Car Service.

Grid 9 Diffusion tube on lamp column outside 164 BlackStock Rd, Prime Car Service.

Grid 9 Outside Elizabeth House, Hurlock St

Grid 8 Near Gillespie School opposite no 52.  

Grid 7 St Thomas' Church

Grid 11 Parking pole outside the gym in the old Arsenal stadium building.

A City of 20 - not just a dream?

Caroline Russell, Jenny Jones & Katie Dawson 

The long awaited response to the Scrutiny on the borough-wide 20mph Limits is due to go to the Islington Council Executive on 24th November. The documents have just been published online.  Councillor Paul Convery has produced a report, sensibly ignoring the usual protestations from the police about un-enforceability and recommending "approval of the inclusion of the Borough Principal and Strategic Road Network under Islington's control into the Borough Wide 20mph scheme where funding is available, subject to consideration of objections in relation to the legal Traffic Management Orders."  This is potentially game-changing for Islington.  

Countless residents, transport campaigners and local politicians have been campaigning for more "people-friendly" streets in Islington for many years.  The objective has been to get 20mph limits on to our main roads where the majority of collisions occur and where large numbers of people live, work and shop.  In a borough where the majority of residents have no access to a car and where many of those that do have cars choose to use them infrequently, it seems extraordinary that we tolerate such a polluted and vehicle dominated street environment.

Having been a stakeholder member of the 20mph Borough Board that oversaw the implementation of the 20mph limits on all Islington's residential roads, I was disappointed when Labour took power in May 2010 and seemed to be undoing much of the council's excellent work developing sustainable transport and nurturing alternatives to car travel.  If this latest report heralds a change in direction on transport from our Labour Council, then that is to be warmly welcomed.

No one would claim that 20mph limits can solve all the problems on our car-dominated street network, but they set an agenda and an expectation that vulnerable road-users may be present.  There's a long way to go with shifting the behaviour of people behind the wheel, people on bikes and people on pavements.  We all have a part to play in sharing our streets and learning to value them as precious public space.  But for now, campaigners from Islington Living Streets, Islington Cyclists Action Group, Islington Green Party and the many residents who have signed our petitions should shout hurrah and thank Councillor Convery for doing the right thing.