Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey choking on toxic air pollutants
‘Our recent monitoring of NO2 levels in the air we breathe in Haringey has been truly shocking’ says Ronald Stewart, Green Party candidate for the London Assembly (Enfield and Haringey constituency)[1]. ‘I expected the results to be bad, but I didn’t expect every single one of the sites we tested to breach EU limits and some at more than double the legal limit.’
Pollution hotspots in Tottenham include: Tottenham High Road (marked with a red diamond) where we measured 100 micrograms per cubic meter, which is 2.5 times the legal limit. But other points on Tottenham High Road are also more than 1.5 times the legal limit (marked with red map markers).[2]
Pollution hotspots in Hornsey and Wood Green include: Muswell Hill roundabout at the top of Dukes Avenue where we measured 75 micrograms per cubic meter, nearly twice the legal limit (marked with a red diamond). Archway and North Road in Highgate also show high levels of pollution. Even St. Martins of Porres primary school near Bounds Green, situated well away from main roads and close to Muswell Hill Golf Course, recorded pollution levels of 40 micrograms per cubic meter, just at the legal limit
Some of the worst polluted sites are close to schools, including primary schools. Near West Green Primary School we measured 60 micrograms per cubic meter, exactly 1.5 times the legal limit. Research has found that children are far more likely to develop asthma when exposed to high levels of NO2 pollution because their lungs are still developing. And they aren’t the only ones at risk. According to Policy Exchange ‘NO2 has been strongly linked with emphysema, bronchitis, and heart disease.’[3]
‘London needs to act now’, says Ronald Stewart. He is committed to working in the London Assembly for real change so that the air we breathe will first meet EU standards and then improve to a level where it is truly safe.
Green Party London Mayoral candidate, Sian Berry is equally determined to make this happen. This will include speeding up the switch-over of buses and taxis to cleaner vehicles, the exclusion of the most polluting cars, vans and lorries from our roads, the improvement of public transport by introducing fair fares and removing artificial fare zones, and supporting local authorities in reducing speed limits to 20 mph.
‘In Haringey, the 20 mph limit has just been introduced’, says Ronald Stewart. ‘Our monitoring predates this. We will repeat the monitoring in a year and see the impact that’s had.’
[1] Haringey Green Party mounted test tubes in 40 locations around the borough on 3 January 2016, took them down on 7 February 2016 and had them analysed by Network for Clean Air in Oxford (see: http://www.cleanairuk.org/index.html)
[2] Key to maps (see images attached): NO2 is measured in micrograms per cubic meter; 40 micrograms per cubic meter is the EU legal limit, which is not necessarily considered safe. Markers on the map in red represents readings above 60 micrograms per cubic meter (with the one marked with a diamond the highest at 100 in our research); Markers in purple reflect readings of between 50 and 60; markers in blue represent readings of between 40 and 50. None of our samples came in below the legal limit.
[3] Policy Exchange, Something in the Air, The forgotten crisis of Britain’s poor air quality, 2012, p 7, accessed at: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/something%20in... on 5 March 2016
Tags for Forum Posts: air quality, no2, pollution, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Philip on
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Though I sympathise with the idea of electing a Labour Mayor, I have to say that Sian Berry's manifesto is far better than Khan's, paricularly on housing which I think is the Big Issue.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Can I please ask whether there was also monitoring for particulate levels? A serious cause of ill health and in some cases avoidable deaths? Did you monitor near schools and playgrounds?
What is the view of the researchers' on locations for new homes and steps to reduce the impact of air pollution by having green barriers and gaps? I'm thinking for example of the earth bund on the south side of Monument Way Tottenham which appears to have acted for several years as a screen both for noise and particulate pollution. The bund has been removed.
On the north side of Monument Way a very busy road is currently separated from homes by a wall and two narrow strips of green. There are now plans to build homes on at least part of this land.
Desperate to please developers I expect the Council to sell-off this land at the Pound shop on Tottenham High Road.
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Thanks, Martina. Any "Green" thoughts about the planning issues?
We watched the BBC documentary last night on the "social cleansing" of the West Hendon Estate and I thought again about the inequities of who gets to buy and who gets to lose a home next to green space, water and perhaps cleaner air. And who breathes in the air of a busy main road next to their home, workplace, playground or classroom.
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The story of the West Hendon Estate is doubly horrifying because it's the result of policies which are becoming the prototype for so many estates across London. We will see some of the same agonised losses of homes and neighbourhood at Love Lane and Northumberland Park as well as possibly around Broadwater Farm. This is going to be a hot issue in the London elections. People need to be challenging Sadiq Khan on his support for Kober's group in Haringey and their blatantly pro-property-developer 'regeneration' policies. Clearly we need a far greater proportion of social rented housing in new developments - what on earth is the Council doing allowing the 'affordable' percentage to be beaten down at St Ann's and around the Spurs site ? Support will be needed in the coming months for Our Tottenham, which has submitted extensive objections to the currently proposed borough plan and hopes that the inspector in July will take due notice. Whoever wins the London elections will need to scrap the crazy targets for cramming our city with tower blocks that are mainly purchased by buy-to-let investors and speculators who are more interested in capital gains than anything else. A useful analysis of the housing crisis and what to do about it is in Danny Dorling's book - see http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/02/all-that-is-solid-revi... . And you may want to compare it with the Green Party's policies on housing - see for example http://www.standard.co.uk/news/mayor/green-mayoral-candidate-ill-ca...
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/5216381/Speed-limits-could-ca...
I think you'll find there's a strong concensus that reducing speed limits to 20mph will increase pollution levels not reduce them. I couldn't find the actual results online but the air pollution study being conducted by the University of Westminster found on Marylebone High Road that the lower the traffic speeds, the higher the pollution levels.
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There's a study done by Imperial College for the City of London here which finds quite a complex picture with 20mph vs 30 mph, with different pollutants going different ways & different between petrol & diesel vehicles. It also suggests that stop-start traffic (which is pretty common in Haringey as far as I can see) will also show different ways.
It's clear that the most effective way to cut air pollution is to reduce the numbers of petrol & diesel engines pushing out fumes....
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This "Real time Air Quality map" from aqicn.org looks really interesting. "Haringey Roadside" seems to be Tottenham High Road.
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Alexander, The location shown by flag 16 on the map is adjacent to 639 High Road N17, in the grounds of the building which used to serve as Haringey's Environment and Planning Department but which is now called "639 Enterprise Centre" and owned by the Greater London Authority.
There's a page about air quality monitoring on the Council's website here.
Of course it's legitimate for political Parties to raise this issue and campaign about environmental concerns generally. And I wouldn't expect the Green Party to keep quiet about this!
On the other hand, I suggest it's important to try to have some degree of separation between political campaigning and the scientific reports. It's also good practice always to give links to reports so we can all read them if we choose. I'm glad that the Green Party followed that practice.It doesn't need more than the simplest Google search to realise that there are powerful competing interests with every reason to present different interpretations of the data. Sometimes this can involve commissioning reports. I find it hard to judge when these are independent and when not. As we saw with the VW emissions scandal, some data may be falsifed.
People need to breathe; and we want to breathe healthy air. It shouldn't be too hard for a scientifically advanced rich country to make that possible. Should it?
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Antoinette, re ^ pollution @ 20mph; if more drivers end up at higher revs in 2nd gear then yes, we'll have higher pollution levels. With the ill advised policy of producing more diesel vehicles over the last 10-15 years that means more NO & particulates. Maybe less accidents but instead more pollutants entering peoples bodies.
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It hasn't received much coverage, but air pollution last weekend across London & beyond was 'very high' by internationally accepted measures. This was mainly due to Particulate matter (PM2.5 in particular, but also PM10).
There's a summary of the data here, but it was largely ignored by the media.
The best way to track levels that I've found is the 'plume' phone app - according to its analysis the air pollution last weekend was the worst in the last 6 months.
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