Want to cut air pollution? Get rid of your car

(The Guardian, 19 Sep 2018) Governments must accept the stark fact that cars must be removed from the street altogether.

I write this from St Martin’s, one of the largest of the Isles of Scilly, where in five days spent among its 120-odd inhabitants I have seen only three moving cars, two tractors and a few boats. With 28 miles of Atlantic ocean in one direction between it and Cornwall, and just a few rocks before the Canadian coastline in the other, St Martin’s has some of the cleanest air in the world.

My landlord, Andrew, sees the benefits. Both his grandparents are 92 and still active, no one he knows has asthma, and lung and heart diseases are uncommon, he says. Harold Wilson always holidayed on the neighbouring island of St Mary’s, but his pipe-smoking never caught on.

Word of the grim state of air on “mainland” UK reaches everyone here. A few days ago came reports suggesting hundreds of thousands of young people in Britain are being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution from diesel vehicles. Then there was new evidence showing that toxic air travels through pregnant women’s lungs and lodges in their placentas. A third study showed how air pollution affects intelligence, and another showed it to be the biggest environmental risk in Europe, causing an estimated 400,000 premature deaths a year. Today, there are reports of a new study suggesting that air pollution increases the chance of getting dementia.

For Scillonians, used to gulping fresh sea air only, this is all academic. But what can people in grossly polluted British cities do about the staggering levels of pollution, apart from escape occasionally to places like St Martin’s? How hard is it really to eliminate most pollution?

External link

The Guardian, 19 Sep 2018: Want to cut air pollution? Get rid of your car