Plan to make London air cleaner
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The Environmental Research Group and the Department of Geography at King’s College London are leading a consortium of universities in a £2.8m research project investigating traffic-related health issues in London.
The ‘ClearfLo’ (Clean Air for London) project will analyse the distribution, transport and transformation of potentially hazardous air pollutants in urban areas and will establish the infrastructure needed to monitor air pollutants moving in and out of the capital.
Air pollution is a major environmental risk to health and is estimated by the World Health Organisation to cause approximately two million premature deaths worldwide each year.
King’s experts recently warned that pollution could reduce the lifespan of some Londoners by up to 10 years.
Understanding how pollutants relevant to human health are dispersed in the urban environment is a challenge, as traditional methods to measure dispersion are not applicable in all urban environments.
As a result, the distribution and concentration of some pollutants in urban areas are not well characterised.
ClearfLo will address this lack of understanding by creating four ‘super’ air-quality monitoring sites from Harwell to the west of London and from Detling to the east of London.
In addition to the data that will be collected from the sites over the next three years, meteorological and air-quality monitors will be placed at the top of the BT Tower.
Furthermore, a number of short but extensive monitoring campaigns will be undertaken in central London using equipment brought in by the consortium partner universities.
Readers' comments (3)
Marcus Gibson | 22 Feb 2010 3:14 pm
What KCL doesn't admit is that traffic pollution is but a tiny fraction of what it was - even from 15 years ago. Modern cars and buses emit far less pollution than their predecessors. The WHO report has no bearing on the UK experience.
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Simon Martin | 23 Feb 2010 1:49 am
While i agree with Marcus Gibsons comments, i would also look at the failure to upgrade the road infrastructure generally, and the deliberate deployment of congestion causing obstacles. Is this another smokescreen to attract more Government (sorry taxpayer) funding for another sceptical environmental project.
It is no surprise to many who have studied traffic flow who know many vehicles are forced to travel through town centres, while only 6% of the traffic is actually travelling there. The rest are merely being funnelled through to reach other destinations because there is no reasonable alternative.
Instead of money constantly being spent on useless surveys and the like it should be spent on upgrading the dilapidated road infrastructure and allowing the 94% of commuters to bypass city centres.
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david weston | 25 Feb 2010 11:50 am
Why London? All major conurbations have the same problem.
Thankfully those in control in the 50s got on with the job and brought in the Clean Air Act which had a profound affect on the health of Londoners. Why are we so protracted now?
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