A new year signifies new beginnings. People usually keep up with their resolutions at least until the year's first half until it starts to naturally and slowly dwindle. For London, its aim to combat air pollution officially abated eight days into the new year as it breached the European Union's annual air pollution limit.
On Friday, Jan.8, London's main air quality control showed that Putney High Street in West London surpassed its annual limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a toxic substance produced by diesel-powered vehicles.
London's NO2 Situation
According to EU, each location is only allowed to have an hourly limit of 200 micrograms of NO2 per cubic meter of air 18 times a year. Putney reached its 19th on 7 a.m., Friday.
"It is breathtaking that toxic air pollution in London has breached the legal limit for a whole year within a few days," says Clean Air's director Simon Birkett.
For Andrew Grieve, an air quality analyst from King's College London, the early breach was not extraordinary. Compared to data from previous years, the discrepancies are not that wide.
"It's just [that] central London, and London as a whole, have a really huge problem with NO2.," says Grieve. He added that the recent breach is a testament of how huge the problem is.
Government To Blame
ClientEarth's lawyer Alan Andrews calls the government's failure to deal with illegal levels of air a "scandal."
Five years have passed since the country has breached EU's pollution limits, and ClientEarth filed a lawsuit against the government for this. In November 2014, EU's top court ordered Britain to hasten their actions against air pollution.
The supreme court has ordered the government to create an action plan that will address the issue. While the plan was published in December 2015, certain cities like London, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Cardiff are still expected to breach the limits for another five years.
The lawyers dub the government's response to the issue as "arrogant," particularly after it has released the air quality control plan. They also think that the plans fall short and that London residents still have to suffer another 10 years of choking hazards if the government will not implement big actions.
In December 2015, Andrews said his group would take the issue back to court. For the time being, they will await the response of the mayoral candidates and see how they will handle the situation.
"Warm words and empty rhetoric won't save lives," he says.
The recent report could have gotten worse as some other roads also have similar situations, but those areas do not have monitoring apparatuses.
Oxford Street also breached the limit in 2015 after just two days. The area may have reached the limit too but incidentally, the monitoring system had malfunctioned.
Photo: Louise Ireland | Flickr
