News from Caroline Russell: Brixton Road breaches 2018’s legal pollution levels in one month

Heavily congested Brixton Road takes the dubious honour of being the first road in London to breach annual air pollution limits in 2018 – for the second year running.

Readings taken at an air quality monitoring station show that the air people are breathing as they walk along Brixton Road has already breached the annual pollution limits for the entire year.

Under EU law there should be no more than 18 occasions a year when people are exposed to levels higher than 200 micrograms of NO2 per cubic metre over the course of an hour.

The World Health Organisation recommends no one is ever exposed to this level of pollution.

Caroline Russell said:

Less than a month into the new year and residents in Brixton are already being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution. It’s a public health catastrophe and needs an urgent response.

The Mayor’s clean bus corridor, where he moved out the dirtiest buses from this route, has given people in Brixton an extra three weeks of clearer air – but it’s still January and they’re already breathing dangerously dirty air.

A clean bus corridor won’t deliver clean air on its own. The ultra low emission zone at the moment only covers the congestion zone. I’ve been calling for the Mayor to widen his clean air zone to cover the whole of London.

I urge all Londoners to tell the Mayor what they think of his latest clean air plans in his consultation which closes on February 28. The next phase of his Ultra Low Emission Zone must be brought in as soon as possible.

Only this morning I met with mums on Brixton Road who are extremely worried about what growing up in a high pollution area is doing to their children’s health. They told me their toddlers are coughing far too much.

The Mayor promised to restore London’s air quality to legal and safe limits, he has a lot of work to do to make this happen.

Nitrogen Dioxide pollution is produced by road traffic and has been linked to causing childhood asthma, dementia and a whole host of health problems for Londoners.

NO2 is deemed to be harmful to human health and the EU permits an annual limit of no more than 18 hours a year at the concentration of >200ug/m3.

Kings College London, who run the air quality monitoring stations, say that some London streets have the highest levels of NO2 exposure in the world.