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Testing by MPs reveals worst air pollution is inside cars

Environmental Audit Committee members find staggeringly bad air in vehicles

Where do you find London's worst air quality? It's not on the pavements where pollution monitors are positioned, or at the road edges where cyclists ride. Instead, it's, inside cars themselves, according to a new study.

The Sunday Times reports that researchers at King’s College London used five MPs from the Government's Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) as guinea pigs in a study of London air pollution.

The MPs were set up with devices that measured airborne pollution and used GPS to record the location.

“Travelling in vehicles gave the greatest average exposure,” said Dr Ben Barratt, a senior air quality scientist at King’s who oversaw the research. “Among the worst was when the MPs got a taxi across London.”

The monitors measured the amount of microscopic carbon particles - produced largely by diesel engines - that the MPs inhaled. Inside taxis, they were found to have inhaled up to 50 million particles per breath.

Walking around Whitehall and Oxford Street, they inhaled 6-7 million particles per breath. At their destination, London's City Hall, levels fell to 3 million particles per breath.

The MPs — Joan Walley, Labour chairwoman of the EAC, Alan Whitehead, Labour, and Matthew Offord, a Conservative — will get the chance to ask London mayor Boris Johnson to explain that discrepancy when he gives evidence to the committee on Wednesday, where he will be asked to account for London's constant breaching of EU air quality standards. (Two other MPs, Mike Kane and Caroline Nokes, also carried the monitors.)

Johnson is set to announce a new initiative this week in which Londoners will be asked to work from home and reduce car use when air pollution levels are high. Instead, they will be asked to use bikes, trains and buses if they have to travel.

But London is not the only city with air pollution problems.

Whalley's monitor peaked at 80 million particles per breath during a taxi ride around her Stoke-on-Trent North constituency. Barrett believes that the problem is that pollution from one car is sucked in by another.

“Vehicles close together suck in each other’s emissions,” he said.

“The air intakes are in the engine compartment close to road level, so they pick up the fumes emitted by the vehicle in front of them. Open windows are another route.”

A review published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, which compared people’s exposure to particulate pollution during different types of commuting such as cycling, driving, trains and buses, supports Barrett's findings.

After examining data from several European and British cities, the authors concluded: “Compared with other transport methods, travelling by car has been shown to involve exposure both to higher particulate matter and to black carbon, even compared with cycling.”

Research has shown that levels of all kinds of air pollutants are at their highest in the middle of a road and in the two or three feet above the road surface. They fall off in the few yards to the kerb — and that's where both pedestrians and pollution monitors are found.

Commenting on the research, Walley said: “During the smog earlier this year, the Mayor said that the quality of the air on his cycle into City Hall seemed ‘perfectly fine’ to him. Yet when we monitored air quality outside City Hall, the levels of carcinogenic particulate pollution were more than three times lower there than what shoppers were being exposed to on Oxford St.”

“There is mounting evidence that air pollution can damage the development of children as well as shortening the life of those with underlying health conditions. We will be asking the Mayor whether he thinks it is acceptable that citizens in our capital city will have to wait until the 2020s before they can breathe safely. Our inquiry has raised concerns about whether the Government and Local Authorities are doing enough to get the most polluting vehicles off the road or to encourage pollution-free forms of inner-city transport such as cycling.”

“Our monitoring experiment also showed that people in vehicles were far more exposed to air pollution than they would be walking along the street, because it builds up in the cars, buses and taxis when they are stuck in the middle of traffic. Car makers test tail pipe emissions but this raises a question about whether manufacturers should also be considering air quality inside vehicles.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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18 comments

Avatar
RedfishUK | 9 years ago
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The fact that pollution is worse in vehicles was a known fact when I studied Environmental Pollution at Uni - which I'm shocked to work out was 30 years ago this month!

So hardly new

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notfastenough | 9 years ago
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So cycling in primary position is bad for your health now, is it?

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kie7077 replied to notfastenough | 9 years ago
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notfastenough wrote:

So cycling in primary position is bad for your health now, is it?

I read that you should stay at least 14feet back, that gives the heavy metals in the exhaust fumes time to fall to the ground. Good luck with the drivers behind not getting road rage though.

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felixcat | 9 years ago
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"Worst air pollution is inside cars"

Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

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zanf replied to felixcat | 9 years ago
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felixcat wrote:

"Worst air pollution is inside cars"

Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

I know, its terrible, isnt it. Not only are they in massive calorific surplus through moving without expending energy, but they are also choking to death on their own shit!

Oh the humanity!

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wrevilo | 9 years ago
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Especially with the improvements made to petrol engines over the past few years. They have come a long way in terms of efficiency and emissions, although in terms of CO2 they cannot rival diesel.

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RobD | 9 years ago
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And yet Diesel vehicles are still lower tax wise for company car users?
I know petrol cars aren't exactly a major improvement, but when you can see the soot and filth coming out the back of a diesel vehicle it makes you wonder why they're practically encouraged.

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truffy | 9 years ago
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The point is that it's easier to develop filters to stop emissions getting out than to develop filters to stop them getting in, simply because the emission is from point sources, while the entrance is across the vehicle as a whole.

Luv'n'cuddles

Ol' Grumpy

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Manchestercyclist | 9 years ago
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I live in Hulme, Manchester. About a quarter of a mile from the mancunian way and have to wipe the soot off my front door weekly. It didn't need a tracking device to tell me that pollution in Manchester is a real today as it was 100 years ago.

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truffy | 9 years ago
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nowasps wrote:

The motor manufacturers will just develop better filters to keep the air cleaner in cars. That will probably sell better to the motoring public than trying to make vehicles pollute less.

And how would that work? Where do the fumes come from, within the car or outside? Are they point or wide dispersive? (There's a clue in the article, you just have to read it, or have it read to you, properly). If the latter, wouldn't the easiest remedy be to reduce emissions further, to everyone's benefit?

Quote:

researchers at King’s College London used five MPs from the Government's Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) as guinea pigs in a study of London air pollution.

So the study was not carried out "by" MPs, but 'on' them. If you need to hire a PT headline writer, I'm one of many who'd be happy to help.

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KirinChris replied to truffy | 9 years ago
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@truffy

Who's wearing their Mr Grumpy socks today then?

The point about filters was, to my reading (and yes I can read), that vehicle makers would take the easy way out, and one which they can use for marketing purposes.

Easier to stick in a better filter than make difficult changes like significant improvements to their engines, unless they are forced to do so.

I didn't read it as being @nowasps' suggestion or preference, or as a cause for patronising comment.

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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Possibly a little off topic, but it's another reason why I'm not a fan of vehicular cycling in city centres. Who wants to breath that rubbish.

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Binky | 9 years ago
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England already gets fined for air pollution. I think the fine is £300 million. It's a case brought forward by the European commission

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nowasps | 9 years ago
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The motor manufacturers will just develop better filters to keep the air cleaner in cars. That will probably sell better to the motoring public than trying to make vehicles pollute less.

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kie7077 replied to nowasps | 9 years ago
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nowasps wrote:

The motor manufacturers will just develop better filters to keep the air cleaner in cars. That will probably sell better to the motoring public than trying to make vehicles pollute less.

They've had decades to do that but haven't.

London Govt should be fined already, they have done zilch to improve the situation, the cost of fitting a few thousand cabs which contribute 30% of inner London's air pollution would surely be a good investment.

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Accessibility f... | 9 years ago
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I am currently in a black cab in ancoats, Manchester. The stench of diesel from the surrounding traffic is absolutely disgusting, sickening even. The sooner tighter emissions regulations and exclusion zones are introduced in towns and cities, the better.

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Dnnnnnn | 9 years ago
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That air quality is worse inside vehicles has been shown before but maybe it's worth saying again. Wonder if we'll see any drivers wearing masks...?

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Dnnnnnn | 9 years ago
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Walley, not Whalley, as you've got in one place!

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