Air pollution killed seven million people in 2012: WHO

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution by sources ranging from cooking fires to auto fumes contributed to an estimated seven million deaths worldwide in 2012, the UN health agency has said.

“Air pollution, and we’re talking about both indoors and outdoors, is now the biggest environmental health problem, and it’s affecting everyone, both developed and developing countries,” said Maria Neira, the World Health Organisation’s public and environmental health chief.

Globally, pollution was linked to one death in eight in 2012, new WHO research found.

The biggest pollution-related killers were heart disease, stroke, pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

The hardest-hit regions of the globe were what the WHO labels Southeast Asia, which includes India and Indonesia, and the Western Pacific, ranging from China and South Korea to Japan and the Philippines.

The global death toll included 4.3 million deaths due to indoor air pollution, chiefly caused by cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves.

The toll from outdoor pollution was 3.7 million, with sources ranging from coal heating fires to diesel engines.

Many people are exposed to both indoor and outdoor pollution, the WHO said, and due to that overlap the separate death toll attributed to the two sources cannot simply be added together, hence the figure of seven million deaths.

The new figure is “shocking and worrying”, Ms Neira told reporters.

When it last released an estimate for deaths related to air pollution, in 2008, the agency had put the figure related to outdoor pollution at 1.3 million, while the number blamed on indoor pollution was 1.9 million.

But a change in research methods makes comparison difficult between the 2008 estimate and the 2012 figures, Neira said.

In the past, for example, the WHO did not take into account the overlap between exposure to both forms, and only assessed urban pollution.

Satellite imagery has made it easier to assess rural pollution, and new knowledge about the health impact of exposure has enabled a better count.

“The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes,” said Neira.

“Few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution. The evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe.”

According to the WHO, some 2.9 billion people in poor nations live in homes that use fires as their principle method of cooking and heating.

Carlos Dora, the WHO’s public and environmental health coordinator, said that turned homes into “combustion chambers”.

Simple measures to stem the impact include so-called “clean cook stoves”, which are a low-tech option, as well as improved ventilation, he said.

Countries also need to rethink policies, Mr Dora said, pointing to the impact in the developed world of a shift to cleaner power sources, more efficient management of energy demand, and technical strides in the auto industry.

He also said transport policies needed a shake-up.

With air pollution having sparked a recent scare in France, leading to restrictions on car use and the temporary scrapping of public transport fees in Paris, Mr Dora said such measures could be applied in the longer term.

“You can’t buy clean air in a bottle,” he said.

“The air is a shared resource. In order to breathe clean air, we have to have interventions in the areas that pollute air.”

The WHO said it planned by the end of this year to release a ranking of the world’s 1,600 most polluted cities.

via Air pollution killed seven million people in 2012: WHO – Telegraph.

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Choking to Death in Tehran

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

You can see the air in Tehran—a faintly acrid orange haze that obscures the towering mountains that ring the sprawling metropolis. The white marble facades of the city’s soaring cement buildings are covered with a thick layer of gray soot. Walking around the city center, women, children and the elderly can often be seen wearing facemasks, or clutching veils across their faces. In this smog, blinking stings the eyes; breathing burns the throat. And in the mornings, when the air is particularly bad, the sidewalks are empty.

But the traffic—a mass of 3 million cars gridlocked and spitting out toxic exhaust—grinds on.

According to the latest World Health Organization numbers, four of the 10 worst-polluted cities in the world are in Iran. The number one slot was awarded to the small Iranian industrial city of Ahvaz, which has three times the concentration of pollutants as Beijing. Tehran, though not in the top 10 polluted cities overall, checks in at number 82 (of 1099), with roughly four times the concentration of polluting particles as smog-blighted Los Angeles. It’s also the country’s capital and the largest city in western Asia, a metropolis of over 8 million people with an outsized political influence in the region and a growing global presence.

When asked how the pollution in the country came to be this bad, many Iranian citizens and government officials point to U.S.-led trade sanctions that cut off access to the country’s much-needed motor gasoline imports, and the technology needed to effectively produce home-grown gas. The sanctions, they say, have forced Iran to use outdated equipment and produce toxic formulations of cheap petroleum just to keep the country’s 21 million cars from running on empty.

But some experts say the problem is more complicated, and the blame should be shared. They argue that the sanctions, though problematic, merely took the lid off of festering issues that had been building for many decades: a drastic population increase, mismanagement and—in some cases—corruption.

The air pollution crisis is now pervasive. “It’s the single worst problem people in the city have to deal with, day in and day out,” says a Tehran cab driver who had been complaining about the high pollution levels that day. “We can’t not talk about it.”

During bad periods, school is cancelled for a week at a time; the sick and elderly are told not to leave their homes; and people are banned from driving their cars on designated days of the week.

And people are dying from what they inhale. In 2013, the Health Ministry announced that up to 4,460 Tehran residents died due to air pollution, equivalent to roughly 25 percent of the total number of deaths in the city each year.

Debates over the city’s growing air pollution woes have intensified—and there has even been talk of relocating the capital, in part to get away from the lethal pollution. In 2013, a parliamentary proposal to choose another capital city received 110 yeas from the 214 Chamber-members present for the vote; supporters of the change cited the pollution, debilitating traffic jams and high earthquake risks. Such a move would be incredibly costly, so it’s unlikely to happen, but the fact that it is being seriously considered shows that many Iranians finally realize they are in the midst of an environmental disaster.

continue reading: Choking to Death in Tehran – Newsweek.

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Indonesia’s forest fires feed ‘brown cloud’ of pollution choking Asia’s cities

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

High above the vast Indonesian island of Sumatra, satellites identify hundreds of plumes of smoke drifting over the oil palm plantations and rainforests. They look harmless as the monsoon winds sweep them north and east towards Singapore, Malaysia and deep into Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. But at ground level, south-east Asian cities have been choking for weeks, wreathed in an acrid, stinking blanket of half-burned vegetation mixed with industrial pollution, car exhaust fumes and ash.

From Palangkarya in Borneo to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the air has been thick, the sun a dull glow and face masks obligatory. Schools, airports and roads have been closed and visibility at times has been down to just a few yards. Communities have had to be evacuated and people advised to remain indoors, transport has been disrupted and more than 50,000 people have had to be treated for asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses in Sumatra alone. Last week more than 200 Malaysian schools were forced to close, and pollution twice reached officially hazardous levels.

The Asian “haze”, which comes and goes with the wind and droughts, is back with a vengeance just eight months after an embarrassed Indonesian government promised it would never happen again and was forced to apologise to neighbouring countries for the pollution that blanketed the region in June 2013.

Mixed with the dense photo-chemical smogs that regularly hang over most large traffic-choked Asian cities, south-east Asia’s air pollution has become not just a major public health hazard but is said to be now threatening food production, tourism and economic expansion. In addition, say scientists, it may now be exacerbating climate change.

According to Nasa satellite maps, more than 3,000 separate fires have been recorded across Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia since mid-January, more than in June 2013 when the pollution spiked to dangerous levels and became a regional diplomatic crisis. This time, the monsoon winds mostly spared Singapore but sent the thick smog from burning peat soils and vegetation over much of the region. Around 10 million people and an area the size of Britain and France have been affected.

Just as in 2013, most of this year’s fires appear to have been started in Riau province, northern Sumatra, the centre of the rampant Indonesian palm oil and pulp-paper industries. According to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 70% of these fires were lit by landowners wanting to clear ground for more plantations. But while Indonesia is widely blamed for the air pollution, the latest satellite images show fires burning and haze spreading across Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and as far away as the Philippines and Papua.

What has surprised observers is the timing: the burning season, when farmers clear land, does not usually start for many months. Monitoring groups such as Walhi, the World Resources Institute and Greenpeace say the fires are linked both to the worst drought seen in years and corruption and inaction at government level. So far, says the Riau government, only a handful of suspects have been held for setting the fires.

Nearly half are burning on land managed by large pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies which have turned the rainforest into a giant fire-prone region by clearing millions of acres for plantations, says Nigel Sizer of the Washington-based World Resources Institute, which uses satellite data to pinpoint hot spots. The corporations have denied involvement, saying the latest fires are illegally set. “The fires are starting outside our forest concessions but with the heavy, circular winds they’re jumping everywhere,” said Kusnan Rahmin, president director of the pulp and paper manufacturer April Indonesia.

Sizer says: “Even if they did not start the fires, they are responsible for massive and dramatic clearing of forests in the regions that have been burning, and to some extent for the conflicts with local communities that may be starting fires to stake their claim to land awarded in concessions to the companies.”

“Once ignited, peat fires are extremely difficult to extinguish and generate massive air pollution that contributes to the choking haze now blanketing much of Sumatra,” says Rhett Butler, editor of the international forest conservation website Mongabay.

Scientists now fear that the Asian haze will intensify and become an annual event as the population of the region rises to an estimated five billion people and climate change bites over the next 30 years. This week’s IPCC report on the expected impacts of climate change will warn of the cities becoming unliveable in for millions as temperatures rise. Droughts are expected to become longer and more intense and the number of extremely hot days to grow.

Still unclear is how far the haze from burning forests feeds into Asia’s rapidly worsening urban air pollution to form a semi-permanent toxic cloud thick enough to disrupt monsoons and weather patterns across the world and reduce sunlight and crop yields.

From being more or less accepted as the inevitable price of industrial development and poverty reduction just a few years ago, air pollution has risen dramatically up the region’s political agenda as the costs are counted. Asia is now the centre of global air pollution, which along with obesity is the world’s fastest growing cause of death.

Every year, says a recent Lancet report, more than 2.1 million people in Asia die prematurely from air pollution, mostly from the minute particles of diesel soot and gases emitted by cars and lorries, as well as half-burned vegetation from forest burning. Of these deaths, 1.2 million were in east Asia and China, and 712,000 in south Asia, including India.

According to the Lancet report, by a consortium of universities working in conjunction with the UN, Asia loses more than 50m years of healthy life from fine particle air pollution per year. Air pollution also contributes to higher rates of cognitive decline, strokes and heart attacks, it says. In a separate report last month, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences claimed that Asian air pollution was now affecting climate around the world and making cities like Beijing uninhabitable and suggestive of what a “nuclear winter” might be like.

“Pollution originating from Asia clearly has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to make such storms or cyclones even stronger,” says Renyi Zhang, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the study with Nasa scientists. “This pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity, and other factors and eventually impacts climate. Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather pattern here over North America”, said Zhang. The study backs UN research that suggests a layer of air pollution, the “brown cloud”, regularly covers the upper atmosphere over Asia between January and March and could precipitate an environmental disaster that could affect billions of people.

It is, says scientists, the result of forest fires, the burning of agricultural wastes, dramatic increases in the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, industries and power stations, and emissions from millions of inefficient cookers burning wood and cow dung.

“The effects of the ‘Asian brown cloud’ have been linked to the retreat, over the last half a century, of glaciers in the Himalayas that supply water to major rivers, including the Yangtse, the Ganges and the Indus,” says co-author Harshal T. Pandve.

Asian leaders have been slow to understand and act on air pollution, but are now aware of people’s anger. China, embarrassed by air pollution before the 2008 Olympics, says it is now costing its economy $400bn a year, or 6% of its GDP. Beijing last month pledged $1.6bn to reward cities for tackling it and said it planned to close 300 factories. Meanwhile, Singapore has proposed a law which would allow it to fine foreign companies for causing cross-border air pollution. But observers say that passing new laws will not enough. In the Philippines, where car numbers are predicted to quadruple within 20 years, a brown cloud hangs over the mega-city of Metro Manila most days, despite higher standards for vehicles and draconian laws.

“Most Asian governments are still concerned with economic development to the detriment of everything else,” says Vicky Segovia, of Manila’s Clean Air partnership. “We are not impressed by any of them.”

A WORLD PROBLEM

INDIA

Air pollution in 180 Indian cities is more than six times higher than World Health Organisation standards and is the country’s fifth biggest killer. Improvements in car and fuel technology since 2000 have been nullified by the rise in car numbers and the poor fuel burned.

USA

Air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths a year across the US, with emissions from cars and trucks causing 53,000 and power generation 52,000, says MIT’s environment laboratory. California suffers most from air pollution (21,000 early deaths).

EUROPE

Janez Potočnik, the EU environment commissioner, says poor air quality is the top environmental cause of premature deaths in the EU, causing more than 100,000 premature deaths a year and costing from £300bn-£800bn a year in extra health costs. Air pollution causes 29,000 early deaths a year in the UK and similar numbers in France and Germany. This month, Paris curbed car use on one day to cut pollution.

AFRICA

African cities are increasingly choked in smog from the burning of poor-quality diesel engines and firewood. In Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of inefficient generators and more than 2m old cars are in use. The main teaching hospital says one in five admissions are now linked to respiratory diseases.

via Indonesia’s forest fires feed ‘brown cloud’ of pollution choking Asia’s cities | Environment | The Observer.

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Has air pollution made Kathmandu unliveable?

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Ajay’s 63-year-old frame strains with each breath. He is lying on an emergency-room stretcher in one of Kathmandu’s large hospitals and he appears exhausted. Behind the oxygen mask, his eyes have the panicked, haunted look of a man who can’t breathe. He has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, an umbrella term for emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It is killing him.

COPD is most often associated with smokers, but Ajay, like many seeking help at Kathmandu emergency rooms, has never smoked. He has, however, worked at road construction in the capital for many years, labouring with a pickaxe and inhaling fumes daily from the eclectic mix of vehicles: ancient buses spewing black smoke, three-wheeled tempos in varying degrees of disrepair and tractors with open motors. Countless cars and legions of motorcycles add to the exhaust fumes, through which pedestrians, bicycles and animals weave in a chaotic flow of traffic that somehow remains in motion.

Nepal generally evokes images of a pristine mountain nation on top of the world. The thick cloud of pollution that threatens to suffocate Nepal’s largest city, however, provides a stark contrast to this reputation. While there are several environmental crises converging here – severe water shortages, for instance, have become status quo – none is as dire as air quality. In the past 10 years, the number of vehicles on Kathmandu’s streets has risen threefold. The problem has become so acute that many of its 1.74 million residents are left wondering: at what point will their city become unliveable?

Kathmandu Kathmandu has experienced a threefold increase in the number of vehicles on its streets since 2000. Photograph: Sara Germain

Nepal’s air quality ranks 177th out of 178 countries, according to Yale’s 2014 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), better only than Bangladesh. As a physician working in one of Kathmandu’s main teaching hospitals, I see a disproportionate amount of patients with respiratory ailments who are admitted to the wards on a daily basis, the victims of dirty air. Walking to and from work along the crowded, exhaust-choked streets, I sometimes wonder how more people are not sick.

The view from my Kathmandu rooftop certainly seems to bear the EPI findings out. On many days, the relatively close Himalayan mountains are obscured by smog, the brick apartment buildings that form Kathmandu’s skyline shrouded in an oppressive cloud. Those new to Kathmandu frequently complain of sore throats and itchy eyes within a few days of arrival.

“I see rapid changes each time I return,” says Anobha Gurung, a Kathmandu-born doctoral candidate at Yale who is studying the air quality in her home city. “Now it is a common sight to see a gray haze for the valley, especially during the winter months, and city residents venturing out of homes wearing masks.”

Gurung and her colleagues have found that during surges in Kathmandu traffic congestion, the level of small particulate matter can measure over 500 micrograms per cubic metre, or 20 times the World Health Organisation’s safe upper limit. By comparison, the recent smog alarm that led Paris to ban cars peaked at just over a fifth of that level: 110 micrograms per cubic metre.

Further data is hard to come by. Nepal’s government has several monitoring stations throughout the city, but they have been abandoned for at least six years. Samir KC, a Nepali researcher based in Vienna who has studied pollution and monitoring in Kathmandu, says the monitors were allowed to fall into disrepair. “During our [study], we found that the repair was done and it was up to the government to pay the bill and start the monitoring,” he said. “Nothing happened.”

Most of the research on air quality in Nepal focuses on indoor pollution: cooking fires are ubiquitous in the countryside. In the capital, however, this may be misleading. “Cooking fires are definitely not the cause, as most households use [propane] gas,” says Samir KC. “Suspended particles including dust, exhaust from vehicles and diesel generators are the main culprits.” Of these, it is vehicle congestion that is most strongly correlated to worsening air quality, according to Gurung’s research.

Findings such as these pose a developmental conundrum for governments intent on modernising. It is one thing to stamp out indoor cooking fires as part of the path towards progress. It is quite another, especially in Asian cities that are increasingly oriented around cars, to try to reduce the emissions that come hand-in-hand with industrialisation and urbanisation.

What’s more, modernisation has also fuelled the appetite for electricity, yet infrastructure has not kept pace. Kathmandu endures daily, scheduled “brownouts”. This has had the predictable consequence of driving people to use generators: when the power goes off, their dull roar can be heard throughout the city, pumping yet more toxic fumes into the air.

At present, the Nepali government is either unwilling or unable to make changes. Urban planning of the kind that addresses ecological issues is largely absent. But the situation is not lost on ordinary Nepalis. Daily, newspapers print letters decrying the situation and demanding better from elected officials. Air quality is a frequent topic of conversation here; facemasks are so commonplace, they are now sold in trendy designer styles made of patterned cloth. Other people use scarves to shield their faces.

In the hospital, for the time being Ajay continues to gasp for air. For smokers with COPD, one of the only effective interventions that improves longevity is to quit smoking. But Ajay and those like him have no cigarettes to give up. The air they breathe is making them sick. For them, the question of whether the city will become unliveable is moot. It already is.

via Has air pollution made Kathmandu unliveable? | Cities | theguardian.com.

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Haze this year ‘could be worse’ than last year’s record haze

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

If you thought last June’s record haze was bad, be prepared for it to get even worse this year.

The Government is bracing itself against such a scenario, with a triple whammy of factors suggesting that Singapore may see pollutant levels hitting new highs in the months ahead.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan and the National Environment Agency (NEA) outlined the potential seriousness of the situation in a briefing on Thursday.

First, haze hit Singapore earlier this month as the region suffered a prolonged dry spell. This is unusually early compared to the traditional June to September dry season in Indonesia, when most burning to clear land takes place.

Second, the recent haze in Riau province in Sumatra, Indonesia, is worse than last year. Riau, directly across the Straits of Malacca from Singapore, has suffered from severe haze since February.

Third, the NEA confirmed that most climate models are predicting that an El Nino weather phenomenon – linked to droughts in Southeast Asia – will develop in the second half of 2014. A dry, El Nino year in the region “is usually associated with aggravated haze”, said Dr Balakrishnan.

The northeast monsoon has so far kept haze from Riau away from Singapore, said NEA chief scientific officer Indrani Rajaram. But the coming inter-monsoon season means lighter winds, and the southwest monsoon will begin around June and could blow haze in Singapore’s direction.

The Government is acting early to prepare for the haze by rolling out the new Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) a month earlier than scheduled. It will now be used from Apr 1 instead of May 1.

The new PSI will incorporate small, hazardous pollutants called PM2.5 to give a better picture of Singapore’s air quality.

The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Manpower have also revised haze health advisories for the public and workplace guidelines for employers to protect their workers.

via Haze this year ‘could be worse’ than last year’s record haze.

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Smog settles on london due to air pollution

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

London has recently experienced increased levels of air pollution, according to new data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra). Air quality on Greater London has been measured at 10/10, reaching the category of ‘very high’. These high levels of air pollution have result in a smog-like haze covering much of the city.

This increase in air pollution levels is due to a combination of pollution being blown in from other areas of Europe as well as a high pressure system that is trapping stale air. The main cause of the heavy haze over London is trapped particulate pollution, which is the most damaging form of pollution when it comes to human health.

Particulate matter is primarily created by traffic and industry. The particles are able to be breathed in and can penetrate the lungs deeply, causing a number of health problems, include cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.

The fog is also caused by traffic-created nitrogen dioxide, meaning that air pollution has been particularly high close to main roads. However, air quality has also be found to be very poor further away from main roads in the capitol.

The London Green party released a report earlier this month (March 14th) that suggests that air pollution throughout the capitol are remaining at high levels that are both dangerous to human health and well above EU limits. Based upon air monitoring carried out in 21 locations within the Highgate ward over November and December 2013, the report found that particulate pollution and traffic-related emissions were incredibly high in several areas.

Four of the areas monitored in Highgate were found to have air pollution levels that reached almost double the legal limits, having implications for the environment and for health conditions. A number of residential streets were also found to be subjected to nitrogen dioxide at levels higher than is legal.

These findings have resulted in more calls being made for the Mayor of London Boris Johnson to issue smog alerts, which would inform the city’s residents of air pollution levels. This would allow people to make informed decisions concerning their day, which could be particularly beneficial for those with health problems that could be affected by poor air quality.

via Smog settles on london due to air pollution – Mar 20 2014 12:55 PM – Breaking News – Envirotech Online.

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Why licence plate bans don’t cut smog

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Licence-plate driving bans such as the one implemented in Paris this week are not the solution to urban air pollution, according to analysis of recent data. In fact, arbitrary restrictions have been shown to make air pollution worse in the long term.

Long-running licence plate schemes operate in many cities, including Athens, Beijing and Mexico City. Some ban cars every second day, others once a week. But drivers inevitably circumvent restrictions by buying cheap, inefficient cars with opposing number plates according to Lucy Sadler, who runs the Low Emission Zones in Europe website. This means some schemes have had an adverse effect on air quality.

“Certainly, in terms of comparison between low emission zones and odd-and-even number plate schemes, it’s a no-brainer,” Sadler said. “There is lots of good evidence saying low emission zones have a good impact on air quality and health. That’s robust and well researched.”

“As the [licence plate] traffic restriction can also affect cleaner vehicles, there is no incentive for motorists to invest in cleaner cars with particle filters or catalysts,” said Martin Lutz, from Berlin’s Department for Urban Development and Environment.

Lutz agreed that low emission zones (LEZs) , hundreds of which now operate in Europe since Stockholm implemented the first in 1996, are a more effective way of decreasing the contribution of traffic to air pollution. LEZs ban inefficient vehicles from city centres, forcing drivers to upgrade their cars.

On Monday, the French government reacted to dangerous levels of pollution by requiring cars with licence plates ending with an even number to stay off the road. Nearly 4,000 fines of €22 were issued to drivers who flaunted the restriction. It was the second time Paris had implemented a short-term ban in response to high smog levels; the city’s air quality authority, Airparif, says such measures are effective in combating pollution emergencies.

But Ben Barratt, from King’s College London, said the effect of short-term actions is difficult to assess. “The weather changes all the time, the emissions change all the time and trying to pin down whether a particular emergency scheme works or not is hard.”

Short-term schemes also cause mass disruption and dissatisfaction, Sadler added. “The impact to society and to vehicle operators is horrendous. Suddenly, tomorrow, you’re not allowed to move.”

Research on the impact of licence plate-based schemes is rare, but an analysis of existing data shows a mixed set of results. Conversely, LEZs and congestion charges, which encourage drivers to use public transport and shift to more efficient cars, are proven to reduce concentrations of dangerous particles and chemicals which cause more than 1.3 million premature deaths in cities every year.

Asked if it was fair to place the burden on drivers, particularly low-income drivers, Sadler said those who earned less tended to use public transport, and the responsibility for the pollution created by cars should ultimately rest on the person at the wheel. “If somebody’s polluting, why should society subsidise that? In air pollution, the polluter pays in principle.”

But according to Barratt, LEZs should be used alongside inner-city congestion charges, as they are in London: “You have to take the vehicles off the road, rather than just try and make them cleaner. So something like congestion charging, where you’ve got a marked decrease in the number of vehicles on the road, is preferable to something where you’ve got the same number of vehicles, [even if] those are cleaner.”

City traffic case studies 

Mexico

The Hoy No Circula (‘today it doesn’t circulate’) was introduced by Mexico City in 1989 to combat rampant air pollution. The city bans cars for one day per week, depending on the last number of their number plate. On Mondays five and six don’t drive, on Tuesdays it’s seven and eight, and so on. The programme was initially successful in bringing down pollution levels, with carbon monoxide (CO) dropping by 11%. But residents began buying second cars (often old inefficient ones) to get around the ban. The long-term impact of the scheme on CO levels has been a 13% rise.

Bogotá

Bogotá’s Pico y Placa (‘peak and plate’) banned cars from driving during the peak traffic hour, two days per week. The Colombians sought to improve on the Mexican model by switching the combinations of days and numbers every year, making it harder to circumvent by buying another car. The policy has failed to deliver clear benefits in air pollution. Restrictions have been tightened periodically, with some of the changes leading to reductions in CO and airborne particles. But one study found most of the major pollutant concentrations were worse because drivers were driving in off-peak hours and driving more to get around the measures.

Beijing

During the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing banned cars on the basis of odd and even numbers, similar to the French ban this week. In conjunction with some fortuitous rain and the shutting down of the factories and industries that cause much of Beijing’s pollution, the ban drove airborne particulate matter concentrations during the Olympics down by 20%. After the Games, the Beijing authorities kept a one-day a week ban in place. But this, like other long-term licence plate bans, has had a limited effect on air pollution and encouraged drivers to buy second cars.

Stockholm

The Swedish capital implemented its LEZ in 1996. Vehicles are banned from these zones if they fall below certain EU emissions standards . The Stockholm LEZ brought emissions of nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) down by 20% and particulate emissions down by half. The effect of this on the air quality was noticeable, with NO and NO2 concentrations down 1.3% and particulate concentrations down 3%.

London

A £5 congestion charge to drive on London’s innermost streets was implemented in 2003. Studies showed emissions of dangerous pollutants – NO, NO2 and small particulate matter (PM10) – were reduced by 12%. The charge is now £10.

In 2008, Transport for London introduced an LEZ, which governs the efficiency of lorries, buses and coaches for the whole of Greater London. The zone led to a fall of 20% in tiny particulate matter (PM2.5) but had no discernable impact on PM10 or NO2. Critics say London’s LEZ needs to include private vehicles if it is to be effective.

Berlin

Implemented in 2008, Berlin’s LEZ bans all diesel vehicles and petrol vehicles without a closed loop catalytic converter. The effect on levels of diesel pollution, which is a known carcinogen , has been dramatic. Concentrations of diesel particulates have dropped by 14-22%. PM10 concentrations near main roads are down 3% and the number of days when the city’s air pollution exceeds European standards has fallen by four to 24 days per year.

• Air of revolution: how activists and social media scrutinise city pollution

via Why licence plate bans don’t cut smog | Cities | theguardian.com.

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City of London firms commit to air quality improvements

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Land Securities, Pret a Manger and The Barbican Centre are among 18 major City of London based organisations to this week commit to tackling air pollution in the Square Mile.

Among the pledges made by the companies are new commitments to reduce gas consumption in City buildings, promote walking and cycling among workers, and reduce the number of deliveries to buildings.

The City of London’s 9,000 residents, 350,000 workers and nine million annual visitors have suffered increasingly poor air quality in recent years, which has attracted consternation from Brussels. Last month, the European Commission started legal proceedings against the UK for its failure to take sufficient action to comply with pollution limits.

However, the City of London Corporation has started to tackle the problem by penalising idling vehicle engines and plans to introduce a 20mph zone later this year.

It has also launched a new ‘CityAir’ scheme that will advise the group of firms signed up to the new initiative, which also include Nomura, UBS, BNY Mellon, Investec, Deloitte and Caffé Nero.

In addition, the Corporation has been working with Kings College London to develop a CityAir app, allowing users to sign up for pollution alerts and find cleaner routes to work when levels of air pollution are high in the capital.

Wendy Mead, deputy chairman of the City Corporation’s Port Heath and Environmental Services Committee, said: “The commitments that these businesses have made are a crucial first step on the path to improved air quality in the Square Mile. If we are to secure the improvements that are needed in London, we all need to play our part.

via City of London firms commit to air quality improvements – 20 Mar 2014 – News from BusinessGreen.

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