LONDON AIR POLLUTION DISASTER

LONDON AIR POLLUTION DISASTER

Simon Burkitt and CCAL have forced the government to release the truth about their sums for deaths from air pollution in LONDON under FOI.It does not make for pretty reading:


*** Government releases previously unpublished spreadsheets for calculating premature deaths due to air pollution in London after formal information request from ‘Clean Air in London’ (CCAL) ***

*** Using government spreadsheets and its current risk figures indicates there were around 5,000 premature deaths in London in 2005 due to dangerous airborne particles (PM10) alone ***

*** CCAL urges Mayor Johnson to apply the Precautionary Principle when developing his Air Quality Strategy and accept government recommendations for sensitivity analyses which suggest there may have been some 6,300 to 7,900 premature deaths in London in 2005 due to PM10 alone ***


“Ministers tend to say:
air quality is good across 99% of the UK’s landmass;
has improved a lot since 1990;
that people lose on average a maximum of seven to eight months of their lives due to the problem;
and the alert bands show air pollution as being mostly ‘low’ or ‘moderate’.

The real picture is quite different.

1.No-one lives in our fields and mountains; they live alongside the 1,117 kilometres of roads in London (2,496 kilometres nationally) forecast by the government to breach legal standards for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in 2010.


2. Air quality has improved since 1990 but the level of dangerous airborne particles (PM10) in London has increased at a mean rate of around 0.4% per year since the late 1990’s despite public health laws requiring sharp reductions.


3. London has the highest annual mean concentrations of NO2 of any capital city in western (or eastern) Europe.


4. Rather than talk abstractly about an average reduction in life expectancy across 60,975,000 people, Ministers should warn people that the amount of time lost per statistical victim due to dangerous airborne particles may be 9.8 years.


5. Air quality can be in the 'low' band all year round but still breach European Union (EU) limit values.”


So,into this very real mess,the local councils intend to force through new sources of particulate pollution,from new waste streams.The continuing denial about how bad London's air is already,how many people its killing,how many childrens' lungs are being damaged and how many pregnancies ruined JUST WILL NOT DO!