Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How did last week's pollution impact you?
Did you cough more? Throat feel scratchy? Eyes sore? Yes!? Read on...
It seems the people of Harringay* Ladder were in the middle of a right pea souper last week with toxic air that exceeded safe levels** for 6 out of 7 days.
And what are our council doing? Can we hear from them? ...deafening silence.....
* Note - pollution monitor in N4
** As outlined by WHO standards
Tags for Forum Posts: air pollution, ladder air pollution
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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THIS should be a matter for the Haringey Council Director of Public Health, Dr Maimaris.
The council's 51-page action plan for air quality appears to have expired in 2024. LINK.
Another municipal action plan appears to replace it, partially. The council's "Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2024–2029" purports to "reduce air pollution".
It's another beautifully produced publication by the council's public relations operation. The pdf file can be downloaded, noted and admired.
However, any previous focus on air pollution seems to have been diluted with many other ideas, including housing, care centres and mental health. All worthy subjects, but a long way from actual meaningful action on the reported repeated breaches of WHO Guidelines for particulates.
And still less, light-years away from committing to testable measurements for results by certain dates. Dates, not brackets of years as in the aging, if not redundant, climate action plan.
Anyone familiar with the council's production—over two decades—of similar glossy publications in this area, will understand precisely how much weight can be placed on them.
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Permalink Reply by Rae Spungles
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I’ve been tracking this as well, and your post is spot on. I’ve actually been digging into the raw data from the Breathe London sensors (specifically the Green Lanes node on Pemberton Road) to see if the numbers match yours and how they stack up over the month. (Anyone can download the raw data, and I urge interested people to have a go themselves.)
Here's the Breathe London data for the Pemberton Road/Green Lanes junction from last week:
On Wednesday, 4th March, the Green Lanes sensor recorded PM2.5 levels of 64 μg/m3. To put that in a global context, that is double the annual average of Beijing.
The average daily data for February also confirms what you’re seeing.
I compared Green Lanes to "control" sites, such as a local primary school and the Tottenham Hale junction. The results are quite shocking:
Dinner surge: Every single evening starting around 17:00, PM2.5 levels on Green Lanes double. By 19:00, our high street is often filthier than the Tottenham Hale traffic junction, even though that junction has ten times as many cars.
Grills fingerprint: During these evening spikes, Nitrogen Dioxide (which comes from car exhausts) stays relatively flat, but PM2.5 (smoke) rockets up. This statistically proves the source is the restaurant flues, not the traffic.
Topography trap: Since our roads slope upwards, even "legal" chimneys on Green Lanes are venting directly into our bedroom windows further up the "Ladder."
I’ve sent my analysis to Councillor Zena Brabazon to point out that being "compliant" with building regs isn't the same as being medically safe. If others are feeling impacts —asthma, stinging eyes, or just that heavy air—please report them. The data proves we aren't imagining it!
I know it's easy to "leave it for another day" because the impact can be subtle and long-term, but the more people report symptoms, the more ammunition for change.
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IT SEEMS difficult to reconcile:
(a) council claims of compliance; with
(b) repeated exceeding of WHO daily & annual particulate guidelines; England annual policy target and UK annual legal limit
Is this not a matter that Haringey Council's Director of Public Health (Will Maimaris) should speak up about?
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson
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I can’t even see how the claim can be made that all premises are legally compliant Clive. Pictures have been posted on HoL a number of times of the pall of cooking ‘smoke’ at the Pemberton/Green Lanes junction. For high risk premises like restaurants the inspection regime needs to be robust as a first step to dealing with the issue.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris
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The data seems fairly conclusive that our beloved restaurants are the main source and I suppose this shouldn't really be surprising. I wonder whether any restaurant has been equipped in some way to reduce or eliminate these emissions.
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Permalink Reply by Zena Brabazon
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Hi Rae Spungles,
Thanks for writing such a clear and helpful post, and also thanks Alice for your weekly charts and readings. Anna and I are both pressing for the meeting with all the relevant officers. I am insisting public health are involved since this is clearly - to my mind - a public health issue. I am assuming the email to me which you have mentioned is the one sent March 2 after we spoke on your doorstep - can you confirm. It was incredibly helpful by the way in setting out the issues, as is this thread.
As you say, being 'compliant' with environmental health or other rules regarding the ovens and plant isn't the same as being 'medically safe'. I have made this point as it is what is coming out of the chimneys and flues which is the issue, hence my pressure to involve public health.
The cumulative impact of the smoke at key peak times is what your tables indicate and I will be using this data at our meeting. And after the meeting Anna and I will report back.
Thanks to everyone for your comments and contributions. It is very helpful for me and Anna.
Zena
Zena Brabazon
Cllr, Harringay ward
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I love your work here, Alice, but unfortunately we have heard from the council. They were really explicit in a meeting attended by hundreds of residents. It's too difficult a problem to solve and Ladder residents should expect no solution to the pollution that blights them even though every other road around Green Lanes has been closed to traffic. It's a post code lottery that we have lost, unfortunately, definitely to the detriment of our long term health. Unless we vote in someone new who has the courage/moral fortitude to tackle it.
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It's not the traffic, Rory. If you love the work, read it.
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You’re right that the chart shows the massive contribution to pollution from the local economy right when you would expected it - evenings - but there are significant levels outside of the times, when the traffic starts to flow.
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Yes, there are background levels of particulates. Closing roads won't make any material difference to that
The before and after data for the ltns show limited to no impact on air quality for those areas within the ltns. This was an obvious and well established flaw in the pro-ltn' campaign (another was the quite outrageous lie regarding increased car use in the borough). People want their road to be quiet. Fine. They should make the case for that, rather than appropriating some cause that appears less selfish.
The closure of the ladder/Wightman was always a non starter. The council lied about that reality. The campaign got them elected and helped ease the rollout in the rest of the borough. A campaign against the pollution from restaurants can make an actual difference to air quality. That's the way forward.
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I think there is a mistaken assumption that the Ladder Road have always been the way they are now - heavily trafficked. I’ve lived on Warham since 1984 and it certainly wasn’t for at least the first decade. You need only to walk up the adjacent street to mine, Seymour which is an ‘up street just like Warham, to see what traffic levels were and could be like. The problem is that traffic is actively encouraged to use Ladder streets as a way of avoiding Green Lanes. Just walk along Salisbury Road towards Green Lanes and the traffic is pointed up my street to get to Hornsey and points west. Whatever you may think about traffic schemes like LTNs there seems to be an assumption by Haringey that we can be used as a way avoiding the real issue, doing something about Green Lanes. The policy became blindingly obvious to me, that my very ordinary and wholly residential street is being used as a de facto Green Lanes bypass, when we applied for it to be closed for 3 hours on a single Sunday to run a play street. After being encouraged to do this by the team that manage play streets the application was turned down at the request of Highways because they considered my street far too important to the local road network to even allow a three hour closure.
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I agree that the ladder and GL has been left hanging in the wind. That is an issue for the many other threads on traffic here. Making the ladder streets quieter is not going to make the palls of pollution disappear from the bottom of the hill. However, making and enforcing regulations about cooking exhaust will make a material difference.
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