Pollution alert: People should avoid actions that contribute to pollution - so what is happening in Harringay...

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter 10 hours ago

THE time of PEAK-pollution is now re-framed by council staff as the Dinner Rush.

So much nicer-sounding. I hope this re-branding came from the big, busy & well-funded council PR Team and not from Environmental Health officers.

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To be Compliant or not to be Compliant, that is the question ~

There appears a discrepancy between on the one hand, Alice's "Exceedance" slide …

… and on the other hand, the Council officers' slide, where there is merely a "Risk of Exceedance', due to an "incomplete and provisional dataset (01 Jan – 18 June 2026)"

Thus, with the help of the "Mean" (average), the council is able to downplay the pollution peak to a mere Risk of Exceedance rather than non-compliance, by noting their unsatisfactory data. Does the council not give the impression they're determined to avoid a non-compliant designation?

And is such a municipal effort not fully compliant with others who suggest there's an agenda is to close all GL restaurants?

Last evening, someone mentioned the lack of granularity in the data. This is a nice way of describing Haringey Council statistics.

In any event, "Annual Mean" (average) is misleading if not dishonest and only helps those who are set on Net Zero action. Is it not clear that council staff intend no meaningful response?

And if there's to be movement on combatting this peak pollution then will it not be a test of the mettle of the newly elected Green Cabinet, the council's Decision-making organ?

#PublicHealth

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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest 3 hours ago

I do not think the council are using these stats to down play the issue Clive - not at the moment. To be fair, we do not know what data other than these two values, are available. But, my worry is that they may, and these data points and any real scientific lack of curiosity will be used to justify inaction ("everything is fine, nothing to see here"). I am also worried that the traders may look at this when engaged with by the council and ask what the problem is.

The problem is exactly as you highlight, these are averages, and lack granularity. In particular, they lack any understanding that they only capture data when the prevailing wind carrying any pollution plume passes over the detector. In this case, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Assuming the wind only blows a pollution plume over the analyser 50% of the time, that would imply the actual numbers, if we adjust for this factor alone, will be double- and both years would be non compliant by some margin.

The council suggested a meeting with residents in September (not sure why we have to wait 3 months), but one of the things we will be pressing for is a wider, more scientific, and statistically and empirically robust analysis and modelling that gives some real understanding as to what it happening. This will need multiple monitors in different locations, close to, and also further from the restaurants.  Unless we have a good picture of the problem we cannot come up with appropriate solutions.

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