Showing posts with label asthma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asthma. Show all posts

Tuesday 26 July 2022

URGENT: Express your support for the ULEZ expansion this week

 


The Furness Primary school clean air art project is one of 4 school projects led by Mums for Lungs and Linett Kamala in Brent as a result of the first round of participatory budgeting, #YouDecide.

Guest post by Amandine Alexandre, in a personal capacity 

 

Last month, I visited Mitchell Brook Primary school in Stonebridge to give a talk about air pollution to the 600-odd pupils as part of a Mums for Lungs’ project.  


When I asked the children whether they knew anyone who suffered from asthma, I was faced with a sea of raised hands. Dozens of pupils wanted to tell me about themselves, their brother or their little cousin and how their health condition impacted their life.

 

Air pollution makes children sick

 

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In London, 1 in 10 children suffer from asthma. Besides, Mitchell Brook is located just a stone's throw away from IKEA on the North Circular road, one of the most polluted spots in the UK. 

 

Still, data do not tell the whole story. Even clean air campaigners like myself need to be reminded from time to time about the faces behind the statistics and the incredible suffering, worry and grief caused by toxic levels of air pollution. This is a health emergency. 

 

Asthma in children can be mild but it can also be incapacitating and even lethal. In 2013, Londoner Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah died as a result of one too many very severe asthma attacks. She was only 9 year old and, like the pupils from Mitchell Brook Primary School, she lived near a very busy road - the South Circular. In December 2020, a second inquest on the death of Ella concluded that air pollution had played a role in her death. 

 

8 to 12 children die of asthma in London every year 

 

Sadly, the passing away of Ella is not an event as rare as we may want to think. According to her mum, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah,  a World Health Organization advocate for health and air quality, every year in London 8 to 12 children die as a result of asthma every year. Let’s not forget that asthma can also be fatal in adults.

 

This week, and for a few days only, we have an opportunity to take an important step towards protecting the most vulnerable among us in Brent. We can express our support for the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to almost the whole of London by August 29th 2023. 

 

Since October last year, the South of the borough has been covered by the ULEZ. It means that, in this part of Brent and the whole expanded area across London, drivers of the most polluting diesel and petrol vehicles are charged £12.50 to drive within the zone. 

 

The impact of this first ULEZ expansion has been positive. The level of nitrogen dioxide in the expanded area has dropped by 20%, according to a report published last week by the Mayor of London. It’s very good news as nitrogen dioxide is responsible for stunting children’s lungs, among other things. 

 

An opportunity to address an injustice 

 

Now is our chance to make sure that all children in Brent - whether they live in the South or the North of the borough or go to school near the North circular - benefit from the same protection from the most polluting vehicles. 

 

82% of vehicles driving outside the existing ULEZ zone are already compliant with the ULEZ standards but we need the number of cleaner vehicles to increase as soon as possible.

For the sake of clarity, the ULEZ expansion won’t be enough to get us the clean air that we all deserve. However, it’s a step in the right direction and an opportunity that, as Brent residents, we must grab with both hands. 

 

Please support the ULEZ expansion by using this really easy tool created by the environmental charity We are possible. 

 

To find out more about the impact of air pollution on children and how we can reduce it, you can visit Mums for Lungs here.

 

 

Thursday 28 April 2022

1 Morland Gardens – is proposed Stopping-Up Order another mistake?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

1.Brent Council notice on display at Morland Gardens. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

In June 2021, Martin published a guest blog I had written, Brent’s development delayed, about the Council’s failure to obtain the Stopping-Up Order needed before they could proceed with their proposed development at 1 Morland Gardens. They’d been told in December 2018 that they would need such an order, if they wanted to build over the footpath and community garden in front of the heritage Victorian villa. They could have applied for it at any time after they received full planning consent on 30 October 2020.

 

Now, finally, they have started the process, by giving notice of a proposed Stopping-Up Order. But already they’ve added to their long catalogue of mistakes over 1 Morland Gardens! The Legal Notice published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 14 April failed to mention Morland Gardens when describing the highway to be stopped-up, only giving its grid references:

 


 

Under the Legal Notice, the only way to inspect or request copies of the draft order and plan was in person at Brent Customer Services, where they would be available for ‘a period of 28 days from the 14th April 2022.’ I went to the Civic Centre on Tuesday 19 April, and the documents were not available to inspect or get copies of. I reported this, and the Senior Officer concerned has just let me know that they will be publishing a new Legal Notice in our local newspaper on 28 April.

 

These were procedural mistakes, but they are not the biggest error. Right from the start, when Council Officers greedily thought they could add the Council-owned “highway” to the 1 Morland Gardens site, in order to build more housing as part of the redevelopment of the Brent Start college, they failed to consider what the effect of a stopping-up would be.

 

3.Part of the Morland Gardens “highway” between the college and community garden.
(Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

At the moment, pedestrians walking to and from Hillside to the homes further along Morland Gardens, and the Five Precious Wounds R.C. Church in Brentfield Road, can take the path alongside the low front wall of the college, and be shielded from the traffic fumes and noise by the trees of the community garden. If these routes (in green on the plan below) are stopped-up, they will have to walk alongside the busy roads, right up to the road junction.

 

4.Brent’s “stopping-up” plan, with before and after routes added.

 

The additional walking distances involved are not great, but pedestrians would now be exposed to the pollutants emitted by the heavy traffic, especially when it is tailed back along Hillside because of the traffic lights. This junction is in what has been designated an Air Quality Management Area (“AQMA”), because of its poor air quality, and in fact is one of the most polluted road junctions in Brent.

 

Because the site is in an AQMA, the planning application for Brent’s Morland Gardens redevelopment had to include an Air Quality Assessment (“AQA”). This was prepared for the Council by a specialist company (Gem Air Quality Ltd), but the scope of what they were asked to report on was just ‘the potential impacts of existing and future traffic levels on a proposed mixed-use development located at Morland Gardens.’ 

 

In short, the assessment only considered the effects of traffic pollution on residents and users inside the planned new building! It did not assess what the plans would mean for pedestrians and others, and did not look at the difference between pollution levels along the paths that would need to be stopped-up and those on the pavements beside the main roads here.

 

In fact, no actual air pollution readings were taken at Morland Gardens, Hillside or Brentfield Road as part of the assessment. It was a desk-based modelling exercise, but it did use an accepted technique described as a “comprehensive tool for investigating air pollution problems due to small networks of roads”. This was applied to a number of “receptor” points around the planned new building:-

 

5.Main part of Figure 3 from the Morland Gardens AQA report.

 

The AQA looked at the “before” and “after” predicted annual mean levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. It can be seen that the receptor locations R1 and R3 are the equivalent to points B and C on the stopping-up order plan, so the predictions for those do provide at least an indication of the likely levels of the traffic pollutants harmful to health. These are the tables of results prepared by Gem Air Quality Ltd and included in their AQA:-

 


 

6.Tables of predicted mean annual values from the AQA. (Gem Air Quality Ltd, October 2019)

 

It will be seen that the predicted level of Nitrogen Dioxide at ground level (especially at the corner of the building nearest the traffic lights – R3 = 51.0) is above the permitted “safe” limit. For particulate matter, the table appears to show levels at around half of the “objective”, but the World Health Organisation guideline value is 20, not 40 µg/m3, and the AQA only looks at PM10 concentrations, not the more harmful PM2.5 particulates (present in vehicle emissions).

 

Added to that, the AQA only contains mean annual predictions. The document admits: ‘that the short-term impacts of NO2 and PM10 emissions have not been modelled as dispersion models are inevitably poor at predicting short-term peaks in pollutant concentrations, which are highly variable from year to year, and from site to site.’  Pedestrians would have to walk closer to the traffic that the “receptor locations”, and the report also admits that: ‘street canyons have not been modelled as part of this assessment.’

 

Having Brent’s proposed nine-storey building at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road would contribute to a “street canyon” effect. The report says: ‘Street canyons may result in elevated pollutant concentrations from road traffic emissions due to a reduced likelihood of the pollutants becoming dispersed in the atmosphere.’

 

Taking all of these facts together, the levels of harmful pollutants which pedestrians would have to face when walking along the “red route” shown on the stopping-up plan above would cause a much higher risk to health than the existing “green routes” which the Council plans to stop-up. Did Brent’s planners consider this, when recommending the scheme for approval? NO!

 

7.The Air Quality section of the Officer Report to Planning Committee, 12 August 2020.

 

The Planning Officers report, and the advice from Brent’s Environmental Health Officer on which it was based, only looked at the AQA, which was just about the air quality inside the proposed building. But para.175 above includes this important sentence:

 

‘Officers acknowledge that there is the potential for high levels of nitrous oxide associated with pollution from adjoining streets to impact on the lower floors of the building (lower ground to second floor).’

 

To deal with this, a condition was included in the planning consent, requiring that the mitigation measures recommended in the AQA must be implemented, and proved to have been implemented, before the new building could be occupied. Those measures can be summed up in this extract from the “Building Mitigation” section of the AQA’s conclusions:

 

‘A mechanical ventilation system that draws air in from the roof may be considered acceptable as predicted NO2 concentrations on the fourth floor and above are below the relevant air quality objectives. However, the inlets should be placed as high as possible (roof level) and as far away from the local roads as possible.’

 

If the air quality at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road is only considered to be safe four floors above street level, then surely pedestrians need to be kept safe from the pollution as well! Deliberately forcing them to use the pavement by the busy junction, rather than the existing paths, shielded from the worst of the traffic pollution by the community garden, must surely be wrong!

 

8.The proposed Morland Gardens redevelopment site, as currently pictured on Google Streetview.

 

There is a variety of additional health risks to pedestrians from exposure to high levels of traffic pollution. I’m especially concerned about the increased risks of asthma to children which the proposed stopping-up could cause. 

 

One of my children has suffered from asthma since the 1980s (with more than a dozen childhood hospitalisations, and one almost fatal attack), caused by the traffic fumes encountered on a 50-metre stretch of Kingsbury Road, on the way to school. The reality of such risks was finally confirmed in the 2020 inquest verdict, following the tragic death of 9-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah, which found that she: ‘died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.’

 

But there is a way that the stopping-up order can be prevented. Para. 4 of the Legal Notice (as it will be reissued) sets out how anyone can object to it:

 

'Persons desiring to object to the making of proposed order should send a statement in writing of their objection and the grounds thereof, to the Head of Healthy Streets and Parking, Regeneration and Environment, 5th Floor North Wing, Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 0FJ, or via email to
trafficorders@brent.gov.uk , quoting the reference TO/23/031/NP, within the period of 28 days from the 28th April 2022.' 

 

And there is a final irony. The person who is responsible for Brent’s proposed Morland Gardens stopping-up order is the Council’s Head of Healthy Streets!

 

Result from the Address Pollution website, 29 April 2022

LINK


Philip Grant.

Friday 25 October 2013

Call for action on air pollution at local, national and European level


A Green member of the European Parliament has called for increased urgency in the fight for clean air after the World Health Organization (WHO) labelled polluted air as carcinogenic.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, pointed to data confirming that 223,000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide in 2010 resulted from air pollution. [1]

Air pollution, which is primarily caused by emissions from vehicles, has already been linked to other lung problems as well as heart failure and premature death. In the UK alone 29,000 people every year die because of air pollution. [2]

Despite air pollution’s impact on people’s health the UK Government has been accused of trying to water down European laws which could reduce the levels of the noxious fumes in the air. [3]

Keith Taylor, the Green Party’s MEP for the South East of England and a leading campaigner for clean air, said:
The evidence from the WHO suggests that the risk from air pollution is similar to that from second hand tobacco smoke. Surely then we should expect controls on air pollution from transport similar in strength to those brought in to protect the public from passive smoking. With this new evidence being published it's clear that failing to act on the air pollution problem would be utterly unforgivable. 
Try as it might the UK Government can no longer pretend that the air pollution problem can be ignored, not when the World Health Organisation classify it as a group 1 carcinogen.
It’s time for the EU to adopt stronger air pollution laws that fall in line with World Health Organization guidelines and it’s time the UK Government works on behalf of the health of its citizens and stops trying to undermine this vital legislative programme.
I'll continue to campaign for clean air across and fight against any moves to weaken vital air pollution laws.
Neasden, North Circular Road and Park Royal are areas of Brent which already suffer from air pollution problems and this will be exacerbated by proposals such as the Harlesden Incinerator. Brent Green Party wants to see action at national, London and borough level to tackle the issue.  We believe that within the council a joint approach through the environment and public health departments, supported by transportation and planning, could result in an effective medium and long term solution to the problem.

Ends
1)     “Air pollution is a leading cause of cancer”- http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/us-cancer-pollution-idUSBRE99G0BB20131017
2)     Government report on deaths in UK linked to air pollution: http://www.hpa.org.uk/ProductsServices/ChemicalsPoisons/Environment/Air/
3)     Blog post by Keith Taylor (with links to government proposals to weaken air pollution laws): http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/keith-taylor/air-pollution-kills_b_2457096.html

Have your say on Brent health services


Tuesday 28 June 2011

Invisible menace threatens children's health



The North Circular at Neasden
I spent more than 10 years teaching at a primary school which was close to the North Circular in Brent. In contrast to other schools where I had taught there were high numbers of children on medication for asthma at the school. Classes often had 6-8 asthmatics compared with only one or two per class where I had taught before. Sports Day could be a nightmare. Although  local GP prescribing policies  may have contributed it appeared that the high level was down to the proximity of a very busy main road.

The impact of London pollution became clearer when we took children on residential trips. Children who had used an inhaler daily at school were able to do without them almost within hours of arriving at the Gordon Brown Outdoor Education Centre in Hampshire or the Youth Hostel in Epping Forest.As the coach reached the borders of London they began to request their inhalers.

New research by the Campaign for Clean Air has found that 1,148 schools in London are within 150 metres of roads carrying 10,000 or more vehicles per day and a total of 2,270 schools are within 400 metres of such roads.

This revelation comes at a time when new scientific research indicates that children exposed to higher levels of traffic-related air pollution at school and home may be at increased risk of developing asthma. Scientists say living near roads travelled by 10,000 or more vehicles per day could be responsible for some 15-30 per cent of all new cases of asthma in children; and of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and CHD (coronary heart disease) in adults 65 years of age and older.

Jenny Jones, the Green Party London Mayoral candidate says:
* parents and teachers must be told when there are high pollution days
*  the Mayor of London has to act immediately to lower fares and reduce the total number of cars on our roads.
* create a very low emission zone which only allows the very cleanest vehicles to enter central London.
*  the Mayor must stick to the promise that all new buses will be hybrids from next year
* reinstate the plans for hybrid taxis which he dropped last year.
A map which shows the schools affected across London, and enables you to see Brent in details can be found  HERE 
or you can download a PDF listing the schools 150metres from a road carrying more than 10,000 vehicles per day HERE

Among the Brent schools listed are Copland High, Gower House, Jewish Free School, Oliver Goldsmith Primary, Our Lady of Grace (Dollis Hill) Our Lady of Lourdes (Stonebridge), Park Lane Primary, Preston Manor High, St Augustine's Primary (Kilburn), Stonebridge Primary,

Simon Birkett, director of Clean Air in London, said:
The government and Mayor Johnson must tackle an invisible public health crisis harming as many people now as we thought during the Great Smog in December 1952.

We need one or more additional inner low emission zones that ban the oldest diesel vehicles from our most polluted roads, and a massive campaign to build public understanding of the dangers of air pollution with advice on how people can protect themselves.