| Topic: | air quality and Putney Green Primary school proposal | |
| Posted by: | John Cameron | |
| Date/Time: | 31/03/12 09:54:00 |
| You may have read this already, but here goes, as it is highly relevant to the air quality debate in Putters I posted this earlier in the week on the Putney Hospital forum, which are now all to call Putney Green with the launch of the sale process......see http://www.putneygreen.co.uk/ A senior academic who I spoke to earlier this week confirmed, and he has personal knowledge of the site, that WBC were "totally irresponsible" to propose building a 420 pupil primary school on a congested main road This is what I wrote, sorry to be boring etc The rise of asthma in children / Aphekom study / the Lower Richmond Road The Aphekom study was published at the end of 2011, examining the effect on health of residents who live near busy roads. The study concluded that these roads could be responsible for some 15 - 30 percent of all new cases of asthma in children; of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and CHD (coronary heart disease) in adults 65 years of age and older. A second of the principal findings of the report is that there is an urgent need for policy makers and urban planners to reduce the exposure to air pollution of urban populations living along congested roads. Below is a summary of the report, but of course the obvious question to ask first is “Does the Lower Richmond Road constitute a busy main road?”. The study concluded that 50% of the population of the 10 cities studied live within 150 metres of roads travelled by 10,000 or more vehicles per day. So we know that 10,000 vehicles per day is a “congested road”. If the Vectos traffic report wasn’t the utter rubbish it is, it may have answered this. However, as Vectos didn’t actually count anything, we won’t find the answer there. Vectos conveniently ignored the LRR is one of the main arterial routes in and out of London. Fortunately though, The Bellamy Roberts report for the discredited polyclinic scheme did actually bother to visit the site, and to count the cars. They actually did it twice; (in 2003 and again in 2006) ie twice more than Vectos. So let’s have a look at their 2006 traffic stats. In Appendix 5 they counted the vehicles passing through the LRR / Queens Ride roundabout. In the morning rush hour (0800 - 0900) it was 1,718, in the evening (1645 – 1745) it was 1,351; so a total of 3,069 in two peak hours. We don’t know how many more there were in the other 22 hours, so let’s make a few assumptions. Firstly I think that traffic has increased over the past 6 years, so I am rounding the peak figure up by 8% to 3,333 vehicles in two hours. Then I am assuming the shoulder hours on either side are 33% of the peak, ie 1,111 vehicles per hour for the 4 shoulder hours. So the peak + shoulder hours total is 7,777 cars, which would leave 2,223 vehicles in the 18 remaining hours to achieve the 10,000 threshold. I may be totally wrong but I think the LRR is a congested road, as defined by Aphekom. If it is, then you have to ask yourself would you want 420 primary school children to walk along it, and then spend up to 7 hours next to it, 5 days a week, if you didn’t have to. Or at the very least mention it in your thinking, or the many documents submitted as part of the application. WBC give the impression they want the primary school at any cost, despite it being adjacent to a road that is always going to be congested, and most congested when young children are arriving. I don’t think it is unreasonable that WBC explain why the applicant / planners / council haven’t considered this in their thinking. Is it entirely appropriate to develop a 420 pupil primary school, adjacent to one of the most congested roads in Putney? They know about pollution, they know about Putney High Street’s significant problems, they know about the Aphekom report. http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/education/educationnews/9416260.Road_pollution_at_schools_and_nurseries_a__scandal_/?ref=rss The Aphekom study Over nearly 3 years, the project combined the efforts of 60 scientists working in 25 cities in 12 countries across Europe to provide this new information and tools. The Aphekom project was funded by the European Commission, together with national and local institutions. The full report can be found at http://www.aphekom.org/web/aphekom.org/home The following is extracted from their report. ************ Aphekom used traditional HIA (health impact assessment) methods to conduct an in-depth update of the impact of air pollution on health in 25 European cities totalling nearly 39 million inhabitants. This work shows that a decrease to 10 micrograms/cubic metre of long-term exposure to PM2.5 fine articles (WHO’s annual air-quality guideline) could add up to 22 months of life expectancy for persons 30 years of age and older, depending on the city and its average level of PM2.5. Hence, exceeding the WHO air-quality guideline on PM2.5 leads to a burden on mortality of nearly 19,000 deaths per annum, more than 15,000 of which are caused by cardiovascular diseases. Aphekom also determined that the monetary health benefits would total some €31.5 billion annually, including savings on health expenditures, absenteeism and intangible costs such as well being, life expectancy and quality of life. These findings show that air pollution continues to have damaging effects on public health in Europe, and that further steps to reduce PM (particulate matter) would result in significant health and monetary gains. The findings are particularly relevant now when various European Union member states have exceeded mandated limit values on particles since 2005, especially in large urban areas. When the European Commission has recently put a number of member states on notice for this reason. And when EU and national agendas are being prepared for implementing existing regulations on air pollution and for revising current EU legislation in 2013. Pollutants such as ultrafine particles occur in high concentrations along streets and roads carrying heavy traffic. And evidence is growing that living near such streets and roads may have serious health effects, particularly on the development of chronic diseases. Until now, however, HIAs have not explicitly incorporated this factor. For this purpose, Aphekom has applied innovative HIA methods to take into account the additional long-term impact on the development of chronic diseases from living near busy roads. We first determined that, on average, over 50 percent of the population in the 10 European cities studied lives within 150 metres of roads travelled by 10,000 or more vehicles per day and could thus be exposed to substantial levels of toxic pollutants. In the cities studied, our HIA showed that living near these roads could be responsible for some 15-30 percent of all new cases of asthma in children; and of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and CHD (coronary heart disease) in adults 65 years of age and older. This burden is substantially larger than previous estimates of exacerbations of chronic diseases, since it has been ignored so far that air pollution may cause the underlying chronic disease as well. Our work thus suggests that the total benefits of reducing traffic exposure for urban populations may have been largely underestimated until now. Together these important findings strengthen earlier arguments that there is an urgent need for policy makers and urban planners to reduce the exposure to air pollution of urban populations living along congested roads. |