Putney High Street Breaches Annual Pollution Limits In 8 Days |
Issue has not gone away but appears to be getting worse Harmful traffic pollution levels on Putney High Street has already breached annual limits eight days into January. Last year it took nine days & in 2013 it took ten days!
Concentrations of nitrogen dioxide - a gas linked to asthma and other serious respiratory problems - are not supposed to go above 200 ug/m3 on more than 18 occasions a year under Government clean air targets. On the Clean Air in London web site, Simon Birkett, Founder and Director said, “It is breathtaking that toxic air pollution in London has breached the legal limit for a whole calendar year within a few days. Special thanks to the London Air Quality Network for diligently reporting it. “Worse, several air pollution monitors have been vying for the dubious honour of recording the first officially monitored breach of the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) legal limit in the world in 2016. Oxford Street would have been first again if it hadn’t been ‘offline’ since last Sunday afternoon – possibly due to vandalism of the scientific equipment. “Boris has still not produced any official monitor from anywhere in the world that reports worse results than London and – even if he did – scientists say London will tend to have the highest NO2 concentrations in the world because of its diesel pollution. “This shocking start to the 60th anniversary year of the world’s first Clean Air Act in 1956, illustrates the scale of Boris’ failure to reduce diesel fumes, which are the main source of NO2 at street-level, and protect hundreds of thousands of people on our busiest shopping streets. “With Boris already irrelevant, Clean Air in London demands ‘bankable’ promises from all the Mayoral candidates to ban carcinogenic diesel exhaust from the most polluted places by 2020, as we banned coal burning so successfully 60 years ago, with an intermediate step by 2018. They must stop fobbing us off with bland statements and ignoring this issue that effects the health of every Londoner. Only George Galloway and Sian Berry from the main parties have promised so far to lead a Clean Air Revolution, if elected. “Put simply, diesel exhaust is the biggest public health catastrophe since the Black Death.” One of its environmental lawyers Alan Andrews told the Evening Standard, ”We first took the Government to court on this issue in 2011 but we can still see legal limits being broke in the first few days of January. "Five years on the Government has still not got a handle on this problem and thousands of people a year are dying in London alone. “In the coming months, we will take the Government back to court. In the meantime we need to hear from all mayoral candidates about how they are going to solve this public health crisis. Warm words and empty rhetoric won’t save lives.”
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