{"id":6021,"date":"2023-01-24T17:21:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T17:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/?p=6021"},"modified":"2023-02-05T16:03:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T16:03:31","slug":"airpocalypse-now-ealing-pollution-levels-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/airpocalypse-now-ealing-pollution-levels-soar\/","title":{"rendered":"Airpocalypse Now – Ealing Pollution Levels Soar"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Is your throat sore or your asthma worse?<\/strong> If so, you don\u2019t need to look far for the culprit. The Mayor of London issued an air pollution alert<\/a> on Saturday as the number of the toxic fine particles in our air, soared over the weekend. The World Health Organisation (WHO), recently adjusted down the \u2018safe\u2019 limit for these particles (known as PM2.5) from 10ug\/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre) to 5. So what were the levels in Ealing? One of our supporters decided to find out …<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cI bought a PM2.5 meter some years back after being diagnosed with asthma, which the consultant told me was almost certainly caused by London\u2019s bad air\u201d.<\/i><\/p>

\u201cWhen the air felt so bad on Sunday, I stepped outside with the meter and immediately got readings of over 60ug\/m3 everywhere I went\u201d.<\/i><\/p>

\u201cI checked again in the evening and it was even worse: 124.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never seen it so high: it was an \u2018air-pocalypse<\/strong>\u2019.\u201d \u201cToday [Tuesday] it\u2019s back down to a more normal level of 22\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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London\u2019s soaring PM2.5 Air Pollution as measured by an Ealing resident on Sunday (22nd January), reached ten to twenty times over the WHO guideline of 5ug\/m3.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The readings taken by our supporter are fairly consistent with reports from professional monitoring services, one of which was giving the PM2.5 level as 89ug\/m3 on Sunday evening. We\u2019ve been breathing air 10 or 20 times over the WHO limit. Even today\u2019s \u2018normal\u2019 is more than 4 times over.<\/p>

The PM2.5 pollution comes mainly from traffic. Log and coal fires add to the toxic brew. The particles are so small that they penetrate deep into the body, causing a range of serious diseases. For this reason Ealing Friends of the Earth believe it\u2019s in the interests of Ealing residents to support the plans to expand the ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone): even though it\u2019s trouble and expense to change a car, it is doable and there\u2019s a scrappage scheme<\/a>. Sadly there\u2019s no scrappage scheme for our hearts or lungs, unless you count the undertaker.<\/p>

Similarly we are backing local measures by Ealing Council to limit traffic around schools and encourage drivers to switch off engines when stationary. And if you are thinking of installing a log fire, please don’t think twice, think once, keep your cash, and don’t do it! Wood smoke may smell nice but is just as bad for our lungs as tobacco smoke and probably worse.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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There is an Ealing Council consultation<\/strong> on air quality which ends on 30 January 2023. To participate, visit the Council website here<\/a>. You can read our response to the consultation here: Air quality plan will “fail to save lives”<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>

There is also information about air quality on the national UK Friends of the Earth website<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air quality measurements in Ealing showed soaring levels of pollution over the weekend of 21-22 January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6021"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6130,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6021\/revisions\/6130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ealingfoe.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}