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Pollution report highlights silent killer
• WELL done Paul Keilthy and the New Journal for your full-page report (Pollution: ‘We break the law and people know nothing about it’, May 21).
The effects on Camden’s health of air quality have been of increasing concern to me as I’ve researched increasingly thoroughly the issue, not least because I’ve noted detrimental effect on my family’s health.
The bank holiday Sunday was a glorious hot and sunny day.
How many of your readers are aware that there was an air pollution warning because of the still air? But they may have noticed increased coughing the next day?
Central London, including Camden, has for years in woeful breach of EU law on both sooty particulates (PM10) and on Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) with no plans in place to redress the balance.
The primary cause of the problem is diesel engines and Boris Johnson’s having unilaterally dropped the requirement of white van man to have clean engines by October was a terrible retrograde step.
This week the Lib Dem party alone has made an unequivocal commitment to meet the air quality standards set down by EU law, for very good reasons, in time for the 2012 Olympics. This will require swift and substantial actions, particularly on the creation of new local low emission zones, discouraging driving and cleaning up buses (NO2) and taxis (PM10).
We are taking 10 years off many of our citizens’ lives and our children are only developing their lungs to 70 per cent of normal capacity, which will affect the rest of their lives.
The damaging effects on cardio-vascular disease are only beginning to be quantified and it may turn out to be as detrimental to health as smoking. This truly is Camden’s silent killer within.
Cllr Paul Braithwaite
Camden’s Cycling Champion
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