Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Interesting data in Haringey's draft clean air plan
Haringey Council have just released their draft Clean Air Plan for consultation. I was interested to see the principal causes of pollution in the borough. There's no surprise that Traffic is the leading culprit. but it was interesting to see that commercial cooking and wood-burning stoves also rank among the top five in both the PM10 and PM 2.5 graphs.
Full report attached. Respond to the consultation at https://haringeyairquality.commonplace.is.
Tags for Forum Posts: air pollution
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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HUGH, thanks for posting this, about the council's draft air quality action plan.
In order to put it into perspective, it is helpful to review the council's Greenest Borough Strategy (downloadable file attached at foot).
The council's 50-page document is truly impressive and beautifully produced.
Page 26 seeks to "Review and update the Council’s Air Quality Management Action Plan and page 35 is titled, Promoting Sustainable Travel, including air quality.
It is all thoroughly worth reading!
In the same way that the Greenest Borough Strategy was shelved, forgotten and gathers dust, there can be no confidence that the council is likely to do anything meaningful with the current air quality action plan.
The council leader is at least indifferent to environmental issues, if not hostile.
The municipal sclerosis is strong, chronic and unrelenting.
17 years ago, Sustainable Transport was the buzz word. It was honest of the council to drop this expression, because there was little sustainable in the council's transport polices since 2007, and there is no realistic prospect of improvement for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately.
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Greenest_borough_strategy.pdf, 2.8 MB
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Permalink Reply by JulieB
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Would be interesting to see if the stats change after 2021 which was when ULEZ was extended to the North Circular, I seem to remember reading that traffic pollution went down by something like 45%.
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Permalink Reply by Haringey Fixers
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One response people might consider is to contribute data obtained by measuring your own environment. Sensors are getting cheaper all the time. You can start by using your phone to measure noise and light pollution for example. You could put one in your garden if you have one, and collaborate with neighbours to monitor your street. If only the raw data the Council collects was freely available!
Bloomberg Philanthropies of all people sponsored hundreds of sensors all over London that measure Nitrogen Dioxide and 'Particulate Matter' every five minutes using Clarity Sensors. The data is freely available via breathelondon-communities.org, having been validated and refined via a complex algorithm crafted by Imperial College.
Healthy Streets North Tottenham put a Clarity sensor up at the Shelbourne Road end of Carbuncle Close (map here and data here) and we did the same on the Broadwater Farm Estate, outside the school gates - (map here and data here).
Both pre-LTN and pre-school streets.
Monitoring our N17 data, even though we're next to a big park, with construction pollution still at a minimum, the World Health Organisation guidelines have been consistently broken most days over the last few years for Nitrogen. We're generally within the UK guidelines, which to me means they're not strict enough.
You may recall London was on the brink of being sued for air pollution levels by the EU just before we left.
It seems quite difficult to assess the data: it demands a scientific approach. Studies have shown that one of the most polluted places is the kitchen. Quite a lot blows in from abroad and, surprisingly to me, 'Volatile Organic Compounds' (such as from Trees) are considered harmful.
So we have our work cut out to pinpoint where the most effective action needs to take place.
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