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Air pollution in London has hit such high densities this week, that primary schools are restricting the time children spend outdoors.
Read more: How dangerous is air pollution? Alarming maps show 90% of us are breathing dirty, harmful air
With Brixton Road in south London hitting its EU maximum level for polluted air only six days into the year, it’s no secret that the capital has its fair share of toxic air. However for the next two days, from January 23 to January 24, the city has been put on “black” alert as pollution is set to be “very high”.
The most badly affected areas in London include the City, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. TheEvening Standard reported that Sir John Cass’s primary school, Aldgate, has reduced the amount of time children should spend outside because of the dirty air, with other schools encouraged to take similar measures.
King’s College London runs the London Air Quality Monitoring network, which supervises the levels of nitrogen dioxide around the city. During pollution episodes such as the current one, KCL has said that roads in London can exceed the EU limit of nitrogen dioxide in a single day, due to the gas coming from diesel vehicles.
London mayor, Sadiq Khan, doubled funding last year to clean up the city’s air. The new fund will be spent on phasing out diesel-only buses and all new black cabs licensed after January 1, 2018 will have to be zero-emission.
It’s not just London that is affected. A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last year found that more than 90 per cent of the UK’s population breathes highly polluted air on a daily basis. Using data from 2012, the WHO study showed that health risks associated with polluted air, including respiratory and cardiovascular disease, strokes, and lung cancer, resulted in 16,335 deaths in the UK in 2012.
Khan has also called on the UK government to take action, such as banning diesel cars to ease the pollution effects countrywide.
Government intervention aside, what can you do to protect yourself from the effects of pollution? KCL has released a new app for iOS and Android named City Air, which alerts users when pollution forecasts are set to be high and gives suggestions of the lowest pollution routes around the city.
At CES this year, Plume Labs unveiled a Flow Pollution sensor – a smart mobile air quality tracker. The device syncs with an app to demonstrate the levels of pollution in the air around us, noting the different levels of particles, including nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that affect how dirty the air is.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
