London pollution & ULEZ

Funnily enough my breathing is better in cities than it is in the country........ but that is a me problem (allergies to anything living, plant or animal it seems) . In my rare visits to the big smoke i found the air outside seemed fine to me, didnt like the underground 1 bit however........... but come on lets be real........... it isnt as clean as in a village.

thankfully not as bad as back in the day......... but i went up the shard in my last visit and as impressive as it was, i thought it was noticable that stuff in the distance was not as clear as i would have expected.
 
jonneymendoza said:
What's funny is that the majority of London is clean and full of green. Pop down my area and you would laugh at me for saying we are still in London.
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Depends on where in London as some areas are leafy, some a concrete jungle, some areas are grubby, some less so - like any city.
I'm not entirely convinced it's a clean city though, i've been to cleaner cities but then again, i've been to a lot, lot worse cities like Dublin.

Feek said:
Black snot was common back in the late 80s/early 90s when I worked in the city and the west end but I've not had that happen in London for years.
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It's mostly the underground but then, that's part and parcel of London to be honest.
 
I think that particulates were the problem originally - from the emissions of coal fires and diesel engines (the black soot)...over the years London has moved away from these sources and the air much cleaner in that respect. Anyone remember when were told to buy diesel cars (circa. 2005) for the MPG efficiency benefit vs petrol? Also going back further were the awful 'pea soupers' which lead to the Clean Air Act of 1956.

However there still is the problem with exhaust emissions like nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide which are made worse during certain weather conditions...also ozone
 
Surely thread title should read "London Pollution is not as high as I thought" ?

Plenty of people were already well aware of the fact that London's Air Quality is actually pretty good.

Just sayin' :p :D
 
When ever I go for deliveries in central London I still get black bogies. Manchester, Bradford, Brum, Liverpool all clean as a whistle. (I am a serial nose picker unfortunately) What I call central London is inside the North circular. Just watching all those people and traffic in the video was getting my sweat on. Honestly do not understand how anyone can feel relaxed in that environment!

He has also gone through all the touristy places where traffic isn't really bad even though that is what he percieves as busy traffic. I wonder what the air quality is like whilst sitting in your car waiting 45 minutes to go 5 miles to get on the Dartford tunnel like it is most days.

This is the crux of where the vast majority of dirty air is on intake. The commuter belt areas and the travelling to get in and out. Not so much when you are actually there.

Traffic on the M1 around Hemel, the A282 tunnel, Watford Bypass, A13 Westbound just to name a couple off the top of my head. I only have to look at google maps right now to see all those areas I just mentioned are all gridlocked.

In my opinion all personal transport should be banned in London and everyone make do with Taxi's and public transport.
 
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Yaayuh! said:
Air quality will depend on weather also, especially wind speed and direction. I'm pretty sure there's more to it than walking around with a meter one day.
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Yup.

All the reliable information from studies is done using sensors that are in place 24/7 and checked on a regular basis.

IIRC London can go from "fairly ok" to "dreadful" very quickly if there isn't enough wind blowing from the right direction, and it can vary massively on location as you get differing "dead spots" for air movement under different conditions, and different times of day (early morning on a breezy day is going to be far better than midday on hot still day).

Walking around with a portable sensor for a day doesn't even give you a day's worth of data for any location, it gives you a few minutes of data on one day for multiple locations and that is scientifically useless unless you repeat that same route at the same time day after day and even then it only allows for a daily snapshot of each location.

From memory Oxford Street (or is it one of the other major shopping streets?) can have air quality that is on a par with Beijing on a bad day, largely because of the layout of the buildings and the geography of the local area meaning that if there is a high pressure area and low wind/wind blows from a certain direction it acts as a trap for pollutants, but at other times the air quality can be good to very good, so if you go on two different days you can get two entirely different results for the air quality.

Walking around with an air monitor and saying "yeah it's not that bad" is no better than going to say a Tube Station on a windy day at 6am and saying "yeah the air down here isn't bad" when there have been no trains and barely any humans for 6 hours, vs going down there at 9am on a still day when it's heaving with people.
Having said all that, I've been reading posts by people with air monitors going on aircraft, and that's frightening when you realise the CO2 levels on an aircraft that has been sat waiting for an hour with the doors closed and the ventilation turned down to save money is hitting "mental impairment" levels (IIRC hitting 4000 parts per million, 500-600 is normally considered high when outside and around 1500 is known to start causing cognitive issues).
 
It used to be bad. Even 10 years ago blowing black stuff out your nose would happen. These days very little pollution. Most of London is 1-2, there’s a little patch around waterloo.
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Generally UK is pretty good.
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WHO PM2.5 annual guideline level is 5μg/m^3, so even inside ULEZ it's above what they advise in one location. Shame he didn't show NO2.
 
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It's the water pollution they should be worried about but they can't tax the little man for that one.

It's a different story when it comes to taxing their friends and donors
 
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