UKH

There is a rather terrifying article in today’s Guardian about PM2.5 pollution in Europe. Apparently 98% of the population of Europe are living where pollution levels regularly exceed the WHO maximum safe level for this form of pollution. To sum it up, in most of Eastern Europe south of the Baltic plus most of Italy levels are many times in excess of the WHO benchmark; the largest areas where levels are below that level are in Scandinavia; over most of the UK levels are around the European average (with major cities being worst affected) and only Scotland north and west of the northern boundary fault has tolerably safe air.  PM2.5 pollution is almost entirely a result of burning fossil fuels, so it’s not just for the climate that we need to phase these fuels out urgently. A shocking figure of 400,000 deaths per year in Europe are attributed to this form of pollution. And many Londoners oppose ULEZ, apparently.

Are you sure?

The WHO safe limit is 5 micrograms per cubic meter.

https://naei.beis.gov.uk/emissionsapp/

Based on that map (pick pm2.5 from the menu), even in the centre of the very worst places to live in the UK like London, it's only a few small areas that get above 4 micrograms per cubic meter.

(as an aside, the EU limit is 25 micrograms per cubic meter)

Edit: Also, after a few seconds reflection, I thought "hmm, I bet some of that stuff is natural"... So it turns out that if you stick the limit as low as the WHO have, half the population of the world would be over the limit even if there were _zero_ man made contributions:

https://news.mit.edu/2022/rethinking-global-air-quality-guidelines-0607

Why let the other half of the story get in the way of a good story?

I think I'll start using "experts say" in all my papers and reports from now on. Think of all the time I'll save by not bothering to research or cite any sources.

Just do that anyway and without bothering to even write "experts say". Congratulations, you are now a tory minister.

Oh well, nothing to worry about then. 

Engaging with the data and context provided would have been a better look.

How do we understand and explain the discrepancy between your alarming sounding post and the data provided which does not appear to support it? Perhaps some words like 'regularly' and 'tolerable' are doing extraordinarily heavy lifting or there has been some mistake, misunderstanding or a statistical sleight of hand?

jk

These type of numbers usually have little substance behind them.

Sadiq Khan keeps repeating the 4,000 death per year in London due to air pollution.

This comes from an ERG report which worked out between 61,800 to 70,200 life years are lost per year in London due to air pollution. Somehow, this equates to the equivalent of 4000 deaths. I've never really understood that as you would need an average life expectancy of less than 18 years for that to check out.

But anyway.

Up to 70,000 years lost spread over 9,000,000 Londoners is less than 3 days of your life per year. Or 7 months over your lifetime.

I could believe air pollution takes several months off our lives. As does exposure to UV, drinking alcohol, too much salt in your diet etc etc. It all adds up.

But that doesn't mean 4,000 people a year are dying in London due to air pollution, and to use the data in this way is increasable misleading, if not plain lying.

Is there a problem with units here? The UK government map linked gives units for PM2.5 as tonnes/1x1km. The WHO guidelines are in microgrammes/ m3. I’m no scientist: is it possible to convert one to the other?

This to be fair is why EVs are a good thing even if the grid isn't fully greened yet.  Pollution in cities is far more of an issue than pollution in the middle of nowhere.

Is there an acceptable number of deaths?

Air pollution is a contributory factor in some deaths? There was a 9 year old who died of asthma, attributed to air pollution.

I expect in many cases the cause of death may be listed as one thing, but pollution was a factor. As you point out, someone might die of heart disease, but salt was a contributory factor. These figures might be an attempt to align the cause of death, with strong contributory factors.

Perhaps lack of exercise was also a contributory factor for our hypothetical friend. I dont see any lies in saying they died from heart disease, exacerbated by factors X,Y,Z. There may not be a clear cut link between some deaths and pollution. But based on what we know and the balance of probability, it's probably not a bad guess. Now the numbers are out there, someone will be along to refine the model and add more data. That's the way science works.

There is one specific recorded death from airborne pollution and that's the sad and untimely death of the little girl Ella Kissi-Debrah's in February 2013 which was caused by acute respiratory failure and where the root cause was directly attributable to an extreme in weather and pollution.

“Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution,” said the coroner on Wednesday.

He said that during Ella’s life, nitrogen dioxide emissions in Lewisham, where she lived, exceeded legal limits, both EU and national levels. Particulate matter levels were above the WHO guidelines, he said.

“The whole of Ella’s life was lived in close proximity to highly polluting roads. I have no difficulty in concluding that her personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM was very high.”

The reality is that we live with airborne pollution all day every day and (I'm not playing things down, believe me I am not) we carry on as normal and for the most part without any noticeable impact. Who went for a run today along side traffic, or sat in traffic in the car with the window down. `even more scarily, which of us is going to get rid of the smell of dinner cooking (did you cook on gas, there's another year off your life) with a scented candle where the VOC's are doing you a world of harm. 

'Noticeable impact' that's the kicker/the killer though. The stats that for life years lost and equivalent deaths relate to the fact that in certain demographics/age groups the impact of airborne pollution increases the chance of mortality in those who have existing conditions or who are genetically predisposed to being adversely impacted by airborne pollution. So that's your young, and your old - but at some point in our lives we are both of these so the impact is tangible unfortunately.

For those that are fit and healthy - yep it's a few months. For others who are less fortunate - it's their ability to recover/maintain health where there is issue hence the focus on airborne pollution. There's also another angle, you live in London (more fool you) and you have a baby - their exposure to airborne pollution in what is essentially a combines space has an impact on their early years physical and mental growth. It may only be a smidge, but it all adds up and now you have a generation of children who are ever so slightly less able (statistically) than the last. Move this on a generation, then another, and the impact could/will become more obvious.

The stats are silly I agree, but the impact is all too real.

Has there? This is the Guardian’s account of the sources for the article theOP referred to:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/20/methodology-behind-the-...

The first response to the OP rubbished the figures but might have muddled the units. Three other replies dismiss the concerns but haven’t engaged with the figures. 

Yeah, it seems a very strange way to express a unit "1x1km" sounds more like an area than a volume but I'm pretty sure the units being used are actually the same, just expressed in a different way, because concentration of a pollutant is always measured in as amount per unit volume (mass per volume or volume per volume). 

All the units are multiples of 1000 or 1 000 000 or 1 000 000 000 compared to each other, so if the units used were not the same, this would mean the concentrations was 1000 times higher than the health limit or 1000 times lower than the health limit (or a million or a billion). This would seem to be very unlikely.

But that isn't how it works is it? It's not like we all take a small hit equally. Environmental factors disproportionately hit certain sectors, the elderly, the young, the poor, those with underlying conditions that are exacerbated and end up having more than your 'mere' 7 months taken off their lives. 

And that's says nothing of the quality of those lives before they die. Excluding the personal cost their is a huge economic cost both in terms of care, and lack of economic output. 

Surely there is only one answer to the question of 'would you like your air quality to be better or worse?'

The expanded ULEZ will apparently make no meaningful difference to air pollution, but will penalize the less well off car owner.  

Source?

Interesting article in Guardian today. Trigger warning- it’s by George Monbiot…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/22/air-pollution-lobbyin...

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-will-ulez-expansion-to-ou...

Thank you. That's interesting, albeit some way short of conclusive.

Hi.  Great topic.

My wife studied the health effects of air pollution for a number of years.  She and her group published numerous studies about this topic in Europe and the United Sates.   I edited many of those papers.  Here are some details that come to mind:

They often started with good data with high spatial resolution about PM levels of different fractions (PM 2.5, 10, and so on).

Then they took these data and compared them to hospital admissions and mortality rates.  They looked at all cause admissions and mortality, as well as specific causes, such as respiratory or circulatory illnesses.

They found robust relationships between PM levels and morbidity and mortality.

For example, when PM levels rise, hospital admissions for things like respiratory stress increase.  This is most obvious in people with conditions such as asthma, COPD, for the immunocompromised, and for the very young and very old, but is also true for the general population.

Also, following high PM levels, there are increased hospital admissions for heart attacks, strokes, and other less obviously related illnesses.  They hypothesize that the PM exposure leads to general innflamatory response, or some kind of immune system reaction, which, in turn, leads to these illnesses.

Last, as you might guess, high PM levels are associated with higher mortality, including all cause mortality, and mortality from different conditions.

If I remember correctly, there is usually a delay of several days between the high PM levels the increased morbidity and mortality. 

It's also interesting to think about the pollution itself.

Small size fractions (PM 2.5) are associated with combustion and industrial processes.  Higher fractions (PM 10) can be everything from soot, residue from brake linings, tires, and roads, construction dust, Saharan dust, marine salts, and so on. 

It's difficult to quantify the health effects of the various fractions, but interestingly, even Saharan dust, a very "natural" pollutant, is associated with higher morbidity and mortality.  Once again, this is hypothetical, but some researchers beleive there might be biological components associoated with dust, such as fungi or bacteria, which can cause health problems.

Last (and this was more than 10 years ago) I was surprised by how high the PM levels were in Eurpean cities, inclding in Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, and so on.  Often, narrow streets and high buildings created "street canyons" which concentrated pollution, particularly from older cars and scooters.   

Ironically, pollution levels in many if not most European cities were higher at that time than levels in Los Angeles, which famously has "bad pollution" but has improved significantly in recent decades.  

To bring this back to climbing, any local from Chamonix will tell you how bad the air pollution is there.  The air blows up from the valley near Sallanches, where there is a great deal of road traffic and light industry, and then is traped by the mountains.  Homes heated with wood exacerbate the problem.

More generally, I think the health effects of air pollution are very real.  It's a "silent killer."  We are all exposed to a greater or lesser extent, and the exposure is constant and cumulative

Every breath you take...

It is a terrible public health problem.

Worse on the Tube!

https://www.mylondon.news/lifestyle/travel/london-underground-expert-warns-...

More recent study, in Bradford, similar findings:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749123011259
 

the Bradford CAZ passed its first anniversary this year. Claims it has made a significant impact on levels of pollutants, though I haven’t seen the figures. Hopefully this will be visible in the health service use data when this study is repeated. 

Air pollution was included as a cause of death on Ella's death certificate only after a sustained campaign by her mother to have it recorded as such.  Normally - as in, in every other death ever recorded - it's not mentioned.  Which is not to say that air polluion isn't a contributory or even primary cause of many more deaths than those recorded as such: it's more common for cause of death to be recorded as "acute respiratory failure" or some such i.e. focusing on the physiological event, rather than what might have triggered that event.  But that hasn't stopped the likes of Ree-Smog twisting the facts to claim otherwise: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/16/how-anti-ulez-campaigne...

...some anti-Ulez campaigners have wilfully inverted the unprecedented finding and attempted to minimise the problem, declaring that only one person has died in the UK of air pollution-related causes since 2001.

...

The ONS ... makes clear that epidemiological studies estimating numbers of deaths that can be attributed to poor air quality may be more informative, and notes that it is “unusual for wider contextual factors such as exposure to car emissions, pollution or air quality to be recorded among the causes of death”. But neither Rees-Mogg nor online sceptics quote this part of the response.

And pigs might fly

Great read.

I think the lowest hanging fruit which many of us could do, but suspect haven't is fit a mechanical heat recovery pump with HEPA filter in our homes with a decent flow rate.

Since we spend about half of our lives inside our houses, this I expect would substantially reduced our exposure to these fine particles.

These systems can be built DIY for little cost, I keep saying I'm going to build one, but fail to make a start.

There is this study:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac30c1

"Aggregating the responses across London, we find an average reduction of less than 3% for NO2 concentrations, and insignificant effects on O3 and PM2.5 concentrations"

This conclusion sounds reasonable. I've read previously that less than 20% of London's emissions comes from private cars. Boilers, industry, busses, planes etc making up a very large proportion.

Khan has repeated that only 10% of cars are not ULEZ compliant.

So if the average none ULEZ compliant car emits twice the pollution as an average ULEZ compliant car (no idea if this is reasonable or not) then you could expect a 4% reduction in pollution.

It will be higher at the road side, but lower in parks, buildings etc where we spend most of our time.

So ULEZ isn't capable of making massive change. 

It's still worth having that cleaner air,  but it's the political delivery of it they got wrong.

It seems pretty unlikely that we are going to find single changes that make a “massive” difference and aren’t politically contested. If we can’t get small changes through, what hope is there for massive ones?

And 4% isn’t insignificant. A few such changes quickly add up.

Excellent post. Very interesting

is it?  I thought it was a result of burning hydrocarbons with incompetence combustion, with fossil fuels in internal combustion engines, small biomass burners and wild fires all being significant contributors.  Notably, wild fires are on the increase, meaning that cleaning up direct human sources isn’t going to be the end of this.

This isn’t a case where a single piece of low hanging fruit makes a big difference, but one where everything needs ongoing improvement.

An angle rarely discussed is that of active air filtration.  HEPA is cheap and low tech.  This kind of air filtration is now rolled out in communal spaces by some local authorities as a follow on from covid.  Domestic units and replacement filters could be made available on proscription for those most at risk from respiratory illness, based on the intersection of their medical history and data on particulate prevalence at their home location.  It’s not tackling the problem at source, but it allows some of the worst effects to be blunted in the mean time.  Likewise a data driven approach at that intersection could give warnings tailored to medical history and PM forecasts with suggested mitigations including use of a high quality proscription fitted electrostatic (FFP3 etc) masks.  Especially post Covid, all the pieces of the puzzle are there to offer those at risk much better and smarter ways of protecting themselves whilst society tackles the emissions.

Windy.com has really nice visualisations of various pollutants in nowcast and forecast.  It makes it clear how the interaction of urban areas and prevailing wind shapes the distribution.  In calmer periods it shows clearly how the nations experiencing the worst of the pollution are often not those making it. Bit too windy for much to build up over the UK right now so I’ve put a screenshot of the Canadian wildfires area in.

Have you divided 70,200 lost years by 4000 deaths and got 18 years life expectancy rather 18 year reduction in life expectancy?

It's not spread out. It's concentrated in areas with higher pollution and concentrated in people with health issues. It's concentrated in individuals.

For more realistic comparison, how about a mandatory lottery where a fifteen hundred Londoners (age zero upwards) are picked at random for execution, every year?

Average age 40ish, average lifespan 85ish, 1500*(85-40) is the same 70,000 years of life lost using the same level of arithmetic that would make an actuary weep.

If you don't like a London death lottery equivalence, saying an average reduction in lifespan of 7 months doesn't matter is a bit like saying a London murder rate ten times worse than it is wouldn't matter as it's also only a 7 month loss in average lifespan.

London is not representative of the rest of the country.

Many amongst those of us who live "elsewhere" are more than a little fed up with whatever London wants being foisted on the rest of us.

We don't live on top of each other like rats, we don't have a decent public transport system, we don't have a major gang violence problem, and we don't have the ear of Government. Furthermore we do have all the detritus of providing London with all the nice things that Londoners want, like water, electricity and food for starters. London  is an exception and shouldn't be treated as if the sun shines out of its' backs......

To assume this is the case for all of London would also be a mistake.

My house is bounded by extensive woodland in two direction. I don't have decent public transport. The houses near me are all semi-detached with decent size gardens. The walk to my kids school in the non woodland direction is pretty green and leafy.

There isn't any traffic, other than people using the woodland road as a fly tipping spot.

It's not covered by the London Clean air zone, so I can have an open fire but is is covered by ULEZ. It makes no sense.

I guess the counter argument to that, is that ULEZ does make a considerable impact in areas of heavy traffic https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1309104222001969

My understanding is that the limited impact shown by the article you linked to earlier is that this is based average values spread across the whole of London,  which includes some very leafy areas as you note. Perhaps unsurprisingly vehicle emissions don't have much of an impact if you are miles from a big road.  However lots of people do live very near very busy roads, often these people do not have the economic means to move to healthier locations in the leafy suburbs. So how do we stop kids like Ella Kissa-Debrah dying from air pollution? I'm not looking for an argument if the ULEZ extension makes sense for where you live specifically (I grew up not a million miles away so know the area), but clearly for many in London, or any major city these measures have a big impact if you are Unlucky enough or can't afford to move away from a busy road.

Oh come on. We need that water, electricity, food and public transport to go to work so we can pay the taxes that fund your universal credit. maternity wards and herpes treatments while you lot sit from 10am in a gloomy pub that smells like wet dog getting pissed on John Smiths. Innit?

I think a more  intelligent role out would be a great start. 

Instead of a blanket ULEZ coverage, why not limit it to busy areas. These areas are typically covered by great public transport so alternatives are available.

This would significantly reduce the impact on car owners and would avoid the shock price change to non-compliant cars.

You would likely then find there wouldn't be any point rolling it out across all of greater London in several years time as the cars would be much newer stock anyway.

It would mean less income for TFL and it would also mean they would have to think about the role out carefully. I can see why they didn't follow this approach.

I couldn't see where the measuring sites were, but didn't understand the claim - "The reduction in NO2 in the uLEZ and LEZ is similar (11%–12%), with a larger reduction elsewhere in the Greater London area (13%)."  

The LEZ is basically Greater London, there isn't a lot elsewhere. It seems a bit odd that the implementation of the central London uLEZ in 2019  [this is prior to inner (2021) and outer(2023) uLEZ expansions] reduces pollution the most 20 miles away?

I have never been on the dole in all my life, I'm now nearly 68 (still working) and started work straight from school. I don't have any children. I 've never had any STD's. I've ever been in a pub in my life before noon - even when on holiday - and I refuse to drink John Smith's because it's crap.

In short - you're talking through your ass, just like far too many Londoners who think that's where the sun shines from.

I quite agree - unfortunately that dick who got elected as London Mayor doesn't.

Wait... what?? Are you telling me that sweeping insults about a large proportion of the population of England is nothing but baseless prejudice? 

I'm genuinely confused about the research on the impacts of ULEZ, there seems to be 2 major studies by respectable groups that seemingly contradict each other. If any one can explain why the work done by UCL and the impact assessment by Jacobs is so different I would be very interested! It's so hard to cut through the over politicised BS on this.  As stated upthread I think its as Jacobs are looking at a much greater area, but I'm not really sure.

What we really want to know is;  oat milk or almond milk in your skinny lattes?

Breast milk from the local single mothers workhouse.

You may drink such expensive rubbish, I do not. Strictly tea with milk and sugar.

I leave such expensive drinks to the overpaid posers such as yourself.

Black coffee all the way.

Which is hard to read but uninspiring if I've understood it, there was a small but significant change in NOx and PM around the ULEZ introduction date. It also discusses ongoing air quality improvements likely associated with preceding policies.

This analysis, while likely strictly fair, seems to miss the point by looking only at the period immediately around the policy change date. The policy ULEZ change was announced many months (years?) in advance, people had been progressively making vehicle changes based on the knowledge it was coming and preceding policies for months if not years. That there is any observable difference around the change date actually seems a little surprising and must be attributable to behavioural changes which are valuable in themselves. Policies like ULEZ when done right will surely have the majority of their impact well before they're actually 'switched on'.

jk

A gradually expanding ULEZ ? I don't think you've thought through the logistics at all, nor the great British public's wilful misunderstanding of even simple restrictions (Lock down being a prime example).

Installing the infrastructure for a ULEZ is not a trivial or inexpensive task. 

How uncivilised. Sometimes I forget myself how the peasantry residing out in the willdlands are just short of a century behind us betters In the evolutionary tree. 

Soya milk at least surely?!?