Air pollution from traffic linked to brain cancer for first time

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

We bike down the West Side Highway, run along Fifth Avenue and do yoga on rooftops, all to improve our well-being — but what if we’re doing so at the expense of our long-term health?

A new study from researchers at McGill University in Canada has linked airborne nanoparticles produced by motor traffic to brain cancer for the first time ever. Published in the journal Epidemiology, the findings show that a one-year increase in pollution exposure raised the risk of brain cancer by more than 10 percent.

Scott Weichenthal, the researcher at McGill who led the study, tells the Guardian that he avoids “heavily polluted streets” when exercising outdoors.

“At an individual level, it is always a good idea to reduce your exposure to pollutants,” he says. “But the more important actions are at a regulatory level, where you can take action that reduces everyone’s exposure — that is where the real benefits come in.”

The researchers looked at the pollution-exposure levels and the medical records of 1.9 million Canadian adults from 1991 to 2016 and found a “consistent” link between brain cancer and the pollution nanoparticles emitted by combustion cars. Researchers took into account other cancer-causing factors such as obesity levels and whether or not people were smokers. However, despite the alarming and consistent data, because it is the first study of its kind, Weichenthal said more studies are needed to replicate the findings.

A global review of air pollution’s effects on the human body, published in February in the journal Chest, found that air pollution can negatively affect virtually “every organ in the body.”

But don’t worry: We don’t need to bring mini air purifiers with us everywhere just yet.

Researchers at Columbia University found that in New York, an estimated 5,660 lives were saved by lower air-pollution levels in 2012 compared to 2002 levels, according to a study published in August in Environmental Research Letters.

Best bet? Move your run into a big park — like Central or Prospect — before the snow starts to fall.

via Air pollution from traffic linked to brain cancer for first time

Posted in Air Quality, Canada, Health Effects of Air Pollution, Medical Studies, USA & Canada, World News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tehran Schools Close Over Choking Smog

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air Quality Index in Tehran on Tuesday hovered around 130, above the threshold of “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, which has pushed authorities to take a further drastic measure to curb the smog.

Based on a number of polluting factors, the index categorizes conditions into good (0-50), moderate (51-100), unhealthy for sensitive groups (101-150), unhealthy (151-200), very unhealthy (201-300) and hazardous (301-500).

The index has breached the 100 threshold and in many areas in Tehran, toxic pollutants topped 150.

Tehran Governor General Anoushirvan Mohseni Bandpay told ISNA on Tuesday that primary schools and kindergartens are to close on Wednesday in Tehran, Shahr-e-Rey, Pakdasht, Pishva, Varamin and Qarchak.

The density of toxic pollutants has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the current Iranian month (Oct. 23), reaching levels considered dangerous for vulnerable citizens, including children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with respiratory and cardiovascular problems, who are categorized in the group of sensitive people.

To encourage private vehicle users to switch to public transport, Mohammad Taqizadeh, the head of Air Pollution Emergency Committee, said bus and subway fares in the metropolis has been slashed by half until further notice.

When air pollution hits an emergency level, representatives from Tehran City Council, Traffic Police, Tehran Municipality, Tehran Governorate and Department of Environment, along with those of interior and health ministries, convene the committee to tackle the phenomenon.

He also announced that to reduce traffic in the central parts of the capital, charges paid by cars entering the zone demarcated by the Air Pollution Control scheme have been increased by 50%.

As per the scheme, each vehicle can enter a “restricted zone” in central Tehran for free for a maximum of 20 days each season, or 80 days a year. If motorists wish to enter the zone more than the number of times allowed in the plan, they need to pay a traffic toll fee.

Spread over 88.5 square kilometers in central Tehran, the zone is bounded by Imam Ali Expressway in the east, Navvab Expressway and Chamran Highway to the west, Besat Expressway in the south and Hemmat Expressway in the north.

Vehicles are barred from entering the area between 6:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. on all days, except Fridays and national holidays. On Thursdays, the time limit is between 6:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Authorities have encouraged Tehran residents to avoid outdoor physical exercises, as the sprawling city experienced its eighth consecutive day of dangerously high air pollution levels.

via Tehran Schools Close Over Choking Smog | Financial Tribune

Posted in Air Quality, Iran, Middle East | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hazardous air quality warning as smoke from bushfires spreads across NSW and Queensland

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Hazardous air quality warning as smoke from bushfires spreads across NSW and Queensland

Residents in Sydney and other parts of the east coast advised to stay indoors where possible to avoid air pollution

Much of Sydney and the Hunter regions of New South Wales have been advised to “stay inside as much as possible” on Tuesday, as winds pushing smoke from the devastating mid-north coast bushfires down the state’s east coast lead to “hazardous” air quality conditions.

Air quality in south-east Queensland has also plunged this week, with people urged to limit their time outdoors.

With NSW in the grip of a “catastrophic” fire danger warning, much of Sydney and the Hunter woke to hazardous air quality conditions on Tuesday, while in Brisbane a thick cloud of smoke also enveloped the city.

Data published by the NSW environment department showed the Illawarra region south of Sydney, also subject to the catastrophic fire warning, was also experiencing “poor” air quality.

The environment department warned people to stay inside as much as possible and avoid outdoor exertion.

“Everyone, especially people with heart or lung disease, should avoid outdoor exertion and stay inside as much as possible,” the department advised.

“Everyone should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.”

The Bureau of Meteorology warned that hot, dry and gusty winds would generate “very dangerous fire conditions across large parts” of NSW on Tuesday.

Gabrielle Woodhouse, a forecaster with the bureau, said the “huge amount of ongoing fire” in the state’s north was pushing smoke down the coast.

She said that with the wind expected to pick up later in the afternoon, air quality was expected to worsen.

“With the wind picking up and the hot and dry conditions, those fires will likely take off again this afternoon so there could be a lot more smoke,” she said.

The weather bureau is forecasting a powerful southerly change to hit Sydney at about 7pm. While it will bring relief through cooler temperatures, it also poses a risk because fires burning near the coast would change direction.

“We’ve issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds around the Snowy Mountains and southern tablelands, that wind has just turned the corner around Eden [in the state’s south] and will move quite quickly along the coast this evening,” Woodhouse said.

“We could have gale-force winds with gusts above 90km per hour.”

On Tuesday the Rural Fire Service commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, said winds would begin strengthening from mid-morning.

“Now is the time to exercise those decisions to leave, leave early and go to safer locations, safer towns or safer places in your community such as shopping centres,” he said.

While there were no new fires of concern in the catastrophic fire danger areas, he said the fires burning in the northern parts of the state were increasing in activity.

“And we’re getting reports of some fire spread particularly in the fires further up in the northern areas of NSW,” he said. “There’s been a number of tactical backburning operations.”

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said employers must consider the health of outdoor workers, with smoke from the fires reducing air quality to “very poor” in major centres, including Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.

Across NSW more than 575 schools were closed on Tuesday after the state premier, Gladys Berejiklian, declared a week-long state of emergency in the wake of devastating fires on the NSW mid-north coast in which three people died and at least 150 homes were destroyed.

via Hazardous air quality warning as smoke from bushfires spreads across NSW and Queensland | Australia news | The Guardian

Posted in Air Quality, Australia & Oceania | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Aviation emissions’ impacts on air quality larger than on climate, study finds

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has quantified the climate and air quality impacts of aviation, broken down by emission type, altitude and location.

The MIT team found that growth in aviation causes twice as much damage to air quality as to the climate.

Writing today in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters, they examine how this damage can be mitigated, and provide consistent comparative assessments of aviation emissions trade-offs, considering both climate and air quality impacts.

The lead researcher on the study, Dr Sebastian Eastham, from the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said: “Aviation emissions are an increasingly significant contributor to anthropogenic climate change. They cause five per cent of global climate forcing.

“When you consider the full flight, which includes emissions from takeoff, cruise and landing, aircraft emissions are also responsible for around 16,000 premature deaths a year from impaired air quality. This is small compared to other sectors, being only around 0.4% of the total deaths attributed annually to global air quality degradation, but is often overlooked in policy analysis.”

“The challenges for aviation sector decision makers wanting to reduce these impacts are the trade-offs between different emission types, and their impacts in different locations.”

Historically, attempts to address the climate and air quality impacts from aviation have been through changes in policy, technology, and/or operations – improvements to fuel efficiency; more stringent emissions standards; market-based measures to reduce CO2 emissions; or the introduction of sustainable aviation fuels.

But the study notes reducing one type of emission can come at the cost of increasing another, either in absolute terms or by limiting potential reductions offered by new technology.

Dr Eastham explained: “We could decrease NOx emissions by designing engines with lower combustor temperatures. However, the resulting loss in thermodynamic efficiency would mean we need to burn more fuel, meaning more CO2. These are the types of trade-offs that need to be quantified, and our study offers a fast way for decision makers to do this.

“We developed a set of metrics for comparing the climate and air quality impacts of aviation emissions at all flights stages, by estimating the social costs per unit of emitted pollutant. The cost metrics are broken down by flight phase – cruise, landing and take-off – and by the geographical region of emission, both per kg of emission and per kg of fuel burn.”

The research team applied the metrics to evaluate the effects of a global expansion in aviation, consistent in magnitude with its current annual growth. They then used this as a benchmark for three scenarios.

First, they considered a growth scenario with fuel efficiency increases and reductions in NOx emissions factors consistent with 10-year goals. Second, they evaluated the trade-offs between the climate and air quality impacts of engine-based NOx emissions reductions. Finally, they re-assessed the climate and air quality trade-offs of jet fuel desulphurisation.

Dr Eastham said: “Our results show three components are responsible for 97 per cent of climate and air quality damages per unit aviation fuel burn: air quality impacts of NOx at 58 per cent; climate impacts of CO2 at 25 per cent; and climate impacts of contrails at 14 per cent. It is important to note that the vast majority, around 86 per cent in fact, of the NOx impacts on air quality are due to the emissions from cruise as opposed to the landing and takeoff cycle. These components – cruise NOx emissions, CO2 emissions, and contrails – are therefore primary targets for future strategies to reduce the atmospheric impacts of aviation emissions.

“To reduce the climate impacts of aviation, measures aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and contrails are likely to have the greatest net climate benefit. In contrast, we found that 94 per cent of air quality impacts are driven by NOx. This suggests that measures aimed at reducing NOx emissions during cruise could lead to the greatest net benefits, even if they cause a small but uncertain climate NOx disbenefit and a small decrease in fuel efficiency.

“Finally, we found the air quality impacts of aviation emissions significantly exceed the climate impacts, with air quality impacts being 1.7 to 4.4 times higher than the climate impact per unit of fuel burn. This must be contrasted to ground-based industries, where post-combustion emissions control and access to cleaner fuels is widespread. For example, the climate impacts of the US power sector are of similar magnitude as the air quality impacts following significant declines in co-pollutant emissions over the past 15 years. This points towards potential political and technological opportunities for reducing the atmospheric impacts of the aviation sector.”

 

via Aviation emissions’ impacts on air quality larger than on climate, study finds | EurekAlert! Science News

Posted in Air Quality, World News | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nature might be better than tech at reducing air pollution: Restoring native vegetation could cut air pollution and costs, study finds

Posted on November 7, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Adding plants and trees to the landscapes near factories and other pollution sources could reduce air pollution by an average of 27 percent, new research suggests.

The study shows that plants — not technologies — may also be cheaper options for cleaning the air near a number of industrial sites, roadways, power plants, commercial boilers and oil and gas drilling sites.

In fact, researchers found that in 75 percent of the counties analyzed, it was cheaper to use plants to mitigate air pollution than it was to add technological interventions — things like smokestack scrubbers — to the sources of pollution.

“The fact is that traditionally, especially as engineers, we don’t think about nature; we just focus on putting technology into everything,” said Bhavik Bakshi, lead author of the study and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at The Ohio State University.

“And so, one key finding is that we need to start looking at nature and learning from it and respecting it. There are win-win opportunities if we do — opportunities that are potentially cheaper and better environmentally.”

The study, published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that nature-based solutions to air pollution might, in many cases, be better than technology at combating air pollution.

The analysis found that for one specific sector — industrial boilers — technology is cheaper at cleaning the air than ecosystem upgrades. And for the manufacturing industry — a broad sector — both ecosystems and technology could offer cost savings, depending on the type of factory.

To start understanding the effect that trees and other plants could have on air pollution, the researchers collected public data on air pollution and vegetation on a county-by-county basis across the lower 48 states. Then, they calculated what adding additional trees and plants might cost.

Their calculations included the capacity of current vegetation — including trees, grasslands and shrublands — to mitigate air pollution. They also considered the effect that restorative planting — bringing the vegetation cover of a given county to its county-average levels — might have on air pollution levels. They estimated the impact of plants on the most common air pollutants — sulfur dioxide, particulate matter that contributes to smog, and nitrogen dioxide.

They found that restoring vegetation to county-level average canopy cover reduced air pollution an average of 27 percent across the counties. This figure varies by county and region — consider, for example, a county in the desert of Nevada and a county in the farmlands of Ohio. Even if the counties were the same size, the county-average land cover in Nevada would be smaller than that in Ohio, because the desert could not grow as much vegetation as farmland.

Their research did not calculate the direct effects plants might have on ozone pollution, because, Bakshi said, the data on ozone emissions is lacking. The analysis also didn’t consider whether certain species of trees or plants would better “scrub” pollution from the air, though Bakshi said it is likely that the species of plant would make a difference in air quality.

They found that adding trees or other plants could lower air pollution levels in both urban and rural areas, though the success rates varied depending on, among other factors, how much land was available to grow new plants and the current air quality.

Reducing air pollution is critical to public health. The American Lung Association estimates that 4 in 10 people in the U.S. live in areas with poor air quality, leading to health issues including asthma, lung cancer and heart disease.

Bakshi said their findings indicate that nature should be a part of the planning process to deal with air pollution, and show that engineers and builders should find ways to incorporate both technological and ecological systems.

“The thing that we are interested in is basically making sure that engineering contributes positively to sustainable development,” Bakshi said.

“And one big reason why engineering has not done that is because engineering has kept nature outside of its system boundary.”

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

via Nature might be better than tech at reducing air pollution: Restoring native vegetation could cut air pollution and costs, study finds — ScienceDaily

Posted in Air Quality | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Industrial Growth Creates Nagging Air Pollution in Vietnam

Posted on November 6, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Five years ago, a car bound for the Ho Chi Minh City airport from downtown might get stuck in a couple of quick jams, costing just an extra minute. Now big swathes of the Vietnamese financial center are congested, and not just during rush hour. That stationary traffic, with engines idling among canyons of high-rises, are contributing to the country’s first major air pollution problem.

The glut of cars reflects people’s rising wealth, which is the byproduct of fast economic growth fueled by a boom in export manufacturing. Cities in Vietnam including the capital Hanoi are the latest Asian cities to become smothered in smog. Mega-cities such as Bangkok, Beijing and Jakarta have been grappling with dirtier air, and for longer, mainly because of vehicular exhaust and factory emissions.

“This is something the Vietnamese government is pretty aware of and I think policy makers and anyone who’s living here can kind of see is becoming more and more of an issue as more people start pouring into the city,” said Maxfield Brown, senior associate with Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

Crops, fires and industrialization

Vietnamese authorities initially assumed smoke wafting north from crop burning in Indonesia had caused the dirty air. They also looked into the role of low rainfall and local crop burning, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates said in an October 2019 country briefing.

“If you go up in an airplane, it’s amazing,” said Frederick Burke, a partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City. “One burning from one field pollutes a whole valley or a whole series of plains. It really has a wide-reaching effect.”

Urban burning of garbage including,  plastics,  adds to the foul air, Brown said. Burning is illegal, he said, but enforcement hasn’t caught up to the law.

A major cause is industry, the consultancy says. Over the past decade, coal consumption tripled and oil consumption rose 70%, the country briefing says. Vietnam depends on coal-fired plants for electricity, and,  because a lot of their northern locations depend on coal,  they give Hanoi “deteriorating air quality,” it says.

Vietnam’s $300 billion economy is forecast to grow up to 6.8% this year, SSI Research in Hanoi says. It expanded 7.1% in 2018, the fastest in 11 years.

Ho Chi Minh City smog

Humidity plus automotive pollution and “waste from industries” creates smog in the south, particularly from September into October, Dezan Shira says. Construction of urban residential buildings, shopping malls and office buildings further addles air in the south, it says.

On Monday, Ho Chi Minh City received a World Air Quality Project score of 149, which falls in the “moderately polluted” range. That means children, the elderly and people with certain diseases should avoid strenuous outdoor activities. At times of the day, the sky takes on a pasty white hue. Hanoi got a rating Monday of 129, also in the unhealthy category.

People living in Ho Chi Minh City point to a growing urban population of workers and students, meaning more vehicles on the road. The population stands at 9 million.

“It seems like we don’t have any regulations to limit the pollution from (buses), form cars, from motorbikes,” said Phuong Hong, a Ho Chi Minh City travel sector businessperson with a 30-minute daily motorcycle commute. “We even have some motor bikes from the 1980s, which means they are 30 years of working.”

Construction work also kicks up dust, and projects across the city have forced the removal of trees, she added. In their place are high-rises for housing and office-commercial space.

A year ago the Vietnamese company Vinfast began selling electric motorcycles, but few appear on the streets now. Ho Chi Minh City dwellers say the electric bikes cost more than gasoline-powered motorcycles and that the city lacks battery charging stations. Two-wheelers are staple transport for commuters.

Metro lines due to open in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City within the next two years should ease some pollution, Brown said. City officials are working toward a ban on motorcycles in central Ho Chi Minh City by 2030, local media say.

Dirtier elsewhere in Asia

Vietnamese city planners probably consider air pollution a problem to solve over the next decade as they watch more severe cases in other cities and learn from them, Brown said.

India, Bangladesh and China have the world’s dirtiest air, with Jakarta fast approaching Beijing levels, Asian media outlet Eco-Business reported in March. Cities in India and China dominated the world’s 50 dirtiest in 2018, according to the air quality monitoring service AirVisual. None were in Vietnam.

via Industrial Growth Creates Nagging Air Pollution in Vietnam | Voice of America – English

Posted in Air Quality, Asia, Vietnam | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Winter air pollution brings ′choking season′ to Balkans

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

With the onset of winter, many Balkan cities, such as Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb, become enveloped in a thick cloud of smog. But instead of tackling the problem, politicians are playing it down.

In recent days, the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s capital, Sarajevo, were ranked by website AirVisual as among the cities with the world’s worst air pollution. This should not come as a surprise. Authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia say that once winter sets in, air quality in other western Balkan cities drops as well.

But their admission is meant as reassurance; they say that there is no reason to panic and that this pollution not exceptional, but just “typical pollution for this time of year.”

And authorities in all three countries are not doing much to change this state of affairs — quite on the contrary. Activist Radomir Lazovic says that sometimes, authorities will knowingly take actions that lead to a further deterioration of the air quality. He says that, for example, “a waste incineration plant is being built in Vinca, near Belgrade, even though the European Investment Bank refused to fund the project because it fails to meet the standards Serbia has accepted as a prospective EU member state.”

Lazovic thinks that by calling the smog seasonal, authorities are trying to downplay the issue and keep citizens quiet. He says calling the pollution normal is ignoring reality. “You can’t say that pollution just happens. There is always a source of pollution and therefore a chance to reduce it,” he says, adding: “But the authorities are actually taking steps that further reduce the air quality.”

Gas vs. coal

While many Balkan cities mainly suffer from bad air quality in winter, the Bosnian cities of Zenica, Tuzla and Lukavac have a smog problem all year round, says Samir Lemes from the Eco Forum Zenica activist group. “Owners of industrial production sites have barely invested, or not at all, in technologies that reduce emissions,” he says, adding that because of the wars in the 1990s, investments were put on hold.

And, he says, postwar privatizations did not help cut back sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, either. The consequence is that in 2018, in the city of Zenica — a major metalworking center in Bosnia-Herzegovina — the concentration of harmful substances in the air exceeded the legal limit on 252 out of 365 days. By law, this limit may be exceeded only three times a year.

Sarajevo also regularly ranks among Europe’s most polluted cities. That’s because it’s located in a valley that hinders air circulation. To make matters worse, many residents still use coal to heat their homes, although the municipality installed gas connections throughout the city in the 1970s  All the same, says Lemes, the gas grid helped significantly to reduce the SO2 and soot concentration in the Sarajevo air.

Polluted air is a major health risk

But the city’s air quality soon deteriorated again when car traffic increased along with the use of solid fuels because of high gas prices, says Lemes. “These developments soon undid the progress that had been made in the 1980s with regard to air quality.” According to Lemes, the unlicensed construction of skyscrapers has further reduced air circulation in the city, and building homes without gas or central heating hasn’t helped, either. With parks becoming fewer and fewer, he says, citizens are increasingly condemned to breathe polluted air.

Nenad, a Sarajevo local, suffers from asthma. He says for those with such a chronic illness, “winter in Sarajevo is choking season.” He says the worst part is not being able to freely move about the city when there is heavy smog, even though people like him obviously need to get to work or occasionally see a doctor. He says the best solution would be to “flee to the mountains, but even that isn’t always an option.”

Boro Nogalo, the director of Zagreb’s Children’s Hospital, estimates that “in 15 years’ time, about half of all people will have developed allergies.” He says there is a strong correlation between allergies and places with serious air pollution. “Pollution damages the mucous membranes of the airways and, in connection with allergens, causes allergic inflammation,“ he says.

Time to listen to science: activists

Although Croatia joined the EU in 2013, it does not have better air than in other countries in the Balkan region. While Croatian cities along the Adriatic coast tend to have decent air quality because of their favorable location, that certainly cannot be said for cities further inland.

In the capital, Zagreb, and elsewhere, legal pollution limits are regularly exceeded. Samir Lemes says there is no simple fix to this problem. The activist says a whole bundle of measures would be needed, such as “filters and other technologies to reduce emissions from industrial centers; public transport needs to be improved and made more accessible.” He thinks it is also important “to better insulate buildings to reduce their need for heating.” And, he says, cars emitting particularly high levels of pollutants should be banned.

He also wants to see “coal gradually phased out as an energy source, because we are living in the 21st century, not the 19th.” Lemes hopes to see renewable energy sources come to replace coal-fired power plants. He says it is not so much about finding new solutions, as many other countries are already leading by example. What he wants to see now is lawmakers finally listen to scientists rather than pursuing political agendas — and for them to start tackling the smog problem at last.

via Winter air pollution brings ′choking season′ to Balkans | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 04.11.2019

Posted in Air Quality, Europe | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Toxic Tube air ‘is a health risk to travellers and staff’

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

PASSENGERS and staff on the London Underground risk breathing in air pollution 18 times worse than above ground, according to scientists.

They absorb toxic particles known as PM2.5 — which have a diameter of less than 2.5 millionths of a metre — through iron-based dust on brakes, wheels and rails, fragments of clothing and passengers’ dead skin cells, found the University College and King’s College London study.

The Victoria Line was worst with a peak of 885 micro grammes per cubic metre, 22 times higher than World Health Organization limits.

UCL’s Brynmor Saunders told The Sunday Times that if the health impacts are the same as surface-level pollution, ‘a person with this exposure would have a seven per cent to 11 per cent higher chance of death due to increased risks of cardiovascular diseases’.

He went on: ‘Most people don’t spend that long down there but it is potentially very worrying for train drivers or maintenance staff. The concentrations are very high even compared to somewhere like Oxford Street.’

TfL challenged the findings, saying people face ‘high concentrations’ of PM2.5 at home, especially when cooking, and from exhaust fumes above ground.

Safety chief Lilli Matson said TfL spends £60million a year cleaning and monitors ‘to ensure that particle levels are well within Health and Safety Executive guidelines’. It has also commissioned new research.

via Toxic Tube air ‘is a health risk to travellers and staff’

Posted in Air Quality, Europe, London, UK | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment