Network
March 3rd 2014
TfL launches London air quality survey
Transport for London seeks residents’ views on air quality in the capital ahead of unveiling of proposals for ultra low emission zone
A six-week survey of Londoners’ views on air quality in the capital has been launched by Transport for London today (March 3 2014).
The consultation, which is open from now until April 13 2014, seeks views from London residents on the extent of air pollution in the capital, what causes it and how the problem should be tackled.
The consultation has been launched to assist the roll out of the London Mayor’s Vision 2020 air quality proposals
Among the 12 questions in the survey, it also asks whether Transport for London (TFL) should be doing more to encourage newer and cleaner vehicles to combat exhaust emissions and what Londoners think the main barriers are to the uptake of such vehicles.
And, the online survey seeks Londoners’ views on what incentives — including tax breaks for purchasing low emission vehicles, cheaper parking, cheaper fuels and purchasing grants — could help to increase the use of cleaner vehicles.
The consultation has been launched today as TfL held a forum with key stakeholders to discuss its proposals for an ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) in the capital, originally proposed by the London Mayor Boris Johnson as part of his ‘Vision 2020’ air quality measures last year (see airqualitynews.com story).
TfL is expected to unveil its proposals for the ULEZ following the meeting, which will then go to consultation with key stakeholders shortly, before Londoners are consulted on the final proposals later this year.
The consultation can be viewed on the TfL website.
The following letters by Dave Walsh about the Beddington Lane incinerator are best ignored by Boris Johnson and his adviser of environmental matters, Matthew Pencharz:
http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/yoursay/letters/10617232.South_London_incinerator_means_Boris_Johnson_won___t_stand_as_a_Croydon_MP/
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/yoursay/letters/letters_to_the_editor/11149711.Where_do_Beddington_Incinerator_particles_go_in_heavy_rain_/?ref=mac
The incinerator at Kirklees is one of the 22 around which the rates of infant mortality, stillbirth, low birthweight babies and birth defects are being examined as part of this study:
http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2012PressReleases/120124Incineratorstudystatement/
Here’s a map showing infant death rates upwind & downwind of the Kirklees incinerator:
http://www.ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/HAGATI_Research_Plea.pdf
and here’s an article about Kirklees Council who didn’t care for the above map:
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/4472880.Legal_threats_in_waste_dispute/
Has Boris Johnson’s advisers failed to tell him that Dr William Brend linked higher infant death rates with increased levels of air pollution around a century ago?
“Newman’s insistence on maternal ignorance as the major cause of infant death in early twentieth-century Britain was coming increasingly under attack by the time of World War I. One of the most obvious limitations of the thesis was its failure to explain the marked and persistent variations in infant mortality rates. Dr Brend, for instance, writing for the Medical Research Committee in 1916, objected:
‘We cannot assume that the Connaught peasantry – many of whom can neither read nor write – are so much better instructed in the care of infants that in spite of poverty and hard conditions infant mortality among them is half that among the mothers of Kensington, and one third that of Bradford, where so much has been done to instruct mothers by means of health visitors and schools for mothers. . . . If instead of areas socialclasses be examined, it will be found that the wives of woodsmen and foresters must he credited with as great a knowledge of the conditions governing infant welfare as that possessed by the professional groups, and it must be believed that the wives of agricultural labourers and shepherds excel in this respect all other classes of manual workers.’ (62)
Many doctors argued that comparisons between infant mortality figures in towns distinguished by energetic schemes of welfare education and health visiting, like Bradford or Huddersfield, and those from other towns without such provision revealed remarkably similar trends and fluctuations. (63) Newman’s work was criticized by contemporaries in the first place for underestimating the significant environmental factors – poverty, inadequate housing and sanitation, atmospheric pollution conducive to respiratory disease (an important cause of infant deaths) and secondly for paying too little attention to epidemiological factors……â€
(“WORKING-CLASS MOTHERS AND INFANT MORTALITY IN ENGLAND, 1895-1914â€, pages 90 & 91)