April, 2012:

http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=19497

Carbon emissions from goods imported and consumed in the UK are rising faster than the average fall in greenhouse gases, MPs have warned.

The Energy and Climate Change Committee noted that the UK’s official figures relating to the cutting of greenhouse gases may not have been accurate following the “outsourcing” of carbon emissions to countries like China.

Chairman of the committee Tim Yeo said that past governments had claimed to be cutting climate change emissions, but in fact a lot of “pollution had simply been outsourced.”

He added: “We get through more consumer goods than ever before in the UK and this is pushing up emissions in manufacturing countries like China.”

Yeo further added that ministers should take a more “honest approach” to Britain’s overall impact on the climate.

The committee urged that the government should attempt to consider “consumption-based emissions” when designing climate change policies and working out data on UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: “We account for our emissions according to international rules that are followed by all countries that are signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, and that are the basis for international negotiations on climate change.

“Ultimately, the best way to reduce the UK’s consumption emissions is to persuade all countries to manage down their territorial emissions through a global deal on climate change.”

The committee of MPs has asked the government to take on board independent climate advisers to work out how the UK could incorporate emissions from imported goods in its policies.

Clear the Air says: your question for 10 points is to name an asian administration that lacks the political will to improve our air whilst paying themselves handsomely !

Air pollution is killing Londoners and Boris is ignoring it, warns Jenny Jones

Green candidate says mayor is ‘burying problem’ by using suppressant vehicles to glue particles near monitoring stations

Hélène Mulholland, political reporter

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012 18.06 BST

Jenny Jones, the Green mayoral candidate for London, has accused mainstream political parties oflacking the political courage to tackle air pollution – despite strong evidence that it represents a major public health risk.

Jones issued a broadside against the political mainstream as she battles to get London’s poor air quality a hearing at mayoral hustings between now and polling day, amid evidence that a problem invisible to the naked eye is now the second biggest public health risk in Britain after smoking, and is linked to around one in five deaths a year in London.

Jones sought to push the environmental agenda at city hall when she served as deputy mayor to Ken Livingstone between 2003-2004. She is urging supporters to give the Labour candidate their second preference vote in the election.

In her view Livingstone “did ignore” the problem until his second mayoral term, when he introduced the low emission zone, but she reserves her strongest criticisms for the incumbent Conservative mayorBoris Johnson, who she says “has been absolutely ignoring all the evidence” despite a report landing on his desk mid-term in his tenure that revealed 4,300 Londoners were dying prematurely because of pollution, with an average 11.5 years taken off their lives.

Jones has repeatedly criticised the incumbent mayor over his use of pollution suppressant vehicles near air quality monitoring stations to deal with the problem in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games. The trucks spray adhesive to the road surface, effectively glueing pollution to the ground. Jones said this only serves to lower the pollution measured, rather than tackling the actual problem.

She added: “He’s burying the problem and pretending it doesn’t exist. How does he square that with his role as mayor, trying to protect Londoners and make their lives better. He’s actually making their lives worse.”

Other air quality campaigners have gone further, with Birkett describing the move as “public health fraud on an industrial scale”.

Jones has outlined some of the radical measures needed to reduce harmful pollutants by cutting traffic and getting people out of their cars. This includes raising the congestion charge from £10 to £15, slapping a £40 daily charge on “gas guzzlers”, an ultra-low emission zone in central London and replacing the central congestion charge zone with a region-wide road pricing scheme after three years.

Jones, whose pledges sometimes raise eyebrows at hustings, says the Greens are not prepared to shy away from radical policies that may be seen as “politically toxic” but are the only way to clean up the problem.

“Either politicians are not recognising how serious the problem is, or they are choosing not to see it, but you can’t argue against it. The facts are there.”

She added: “Greens are not frightened to tackle politically toxic things if they feel they are important.”

Airborne pollution in the form of fine particulate matter – such as PM2.5, particles of less than 2.5 micrometres – comes mostly from combustion sources, including transport, domestic and industrial sources, and aggravates respiratory and cardiovascular conditions.

Research shows these PM2.5s are likely to be inhaled deep into the respiratory tract and with other forms of air pollution can reduce the lung capacity of children. Air quality in the capital is the worst in the UK and also ranks among the worst in Europe, with research suggesting that up to 50,000 people die early in the UK every year as a result of air pollution.

Transport for London, which Johnson chairs, insists that trials in London and abroad have shown the effectiveness of dust suppressants in reducing particulate matter (PM10) levels .

Leon Daniels, the managing director of surface transport at TfL, said: “Transport for London has always been clear that the use of dust suppressants across London is in combination with other measures to reduce harmful PM10 levels at a range of locations where we know there are higher levels of this pollutant. This is in addition to a range of longer terms, sustainable measures aiming to reduce pollution levels at source across the capital.”

Britain is still facing fines of up to £300m over a repeated failure to meet key EU air quality directives since 2005, when Labour was in government and Livingstone was installed at city hall. Under the coalition government, however, there is little sign that concerted action os planned. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently claimed that the costs of meeting EU pollution targets may not match the benefits.

But Jones warns politicians need to introduce the radical measures needed amid signs that the problem is worsening. Last month, pollution in London hit record levels due to a mix of weather conditions and traffic fumes, in particular from diesel cars, vans and lorries.

Jones says part of the problem is that the public don’t realise the scale of the public health risks attached.

“It’s not like the smog of the 1950s that was really tangible. Now, the air looks quite clean but actually it’s not, but people aren’t seeing it. Though if you go to a high building, you can see an orange haze across the horizon and that’s the pollution.”

The Green party has made a six minute film to highlight the threat to people’s health from poor air quality, drawing on the expertise of air quality expert, Professor Frank Kelly, of King’s College London, and Simon Birkett, founder for the Campaign for Clean Air in London.

Jones believes if parents understand the damage to public health, the public will be more willing to accept that a change in behaviour is necessary.

Research by the Campaign for Clean Air in London has found that 1,148 schools in London are within 150 metres of roads carrying 10,000 or more vehicles per day, putting children going to these schools, and living near them, at increased risk of developing asthma, and their parents of developing heart problems.

The Green mayoral candidate, who polled just 2% in the latest survey of voting intention on May 3, wants more Green party members to be elected to the London assembly to pressure the next elected mayor to show political leadership on the issue. Jones, currently one of two Green assembly members, will also defend her assembly seat in May.

She says that one of the measures that needs to be considered by the next elected mayor is simply to close roads from traffic, but admits it is tough getting the message across.

“That’s why it’s incredibly important to have a strong assembly team because then we can speak much more loudly and get the mayor, even if it’s not me, to do the right thing.”

Jones is taking part in an event organised by eco-activist group Climate Rush on Thursday evening in protest at the capital’s dirty air.

The event will begin outside the offices of Defra and protesters will then take over a road, calling it London’s “first true clean air zone”, and holding a picnic and street party.

Contact the Environment editor
environment@guardian.co.uk

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 18.06 BST on Thursday 19 April 2012. It was last modified at 19.33 BST on Thursday 19 April 2012.

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/air-pollution-raises-risk-of-repeat-heart-attack-by-43-percent-new-israeli-study-finds-1.425161?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.218%2C

Research by the Tel Aviv University and the Technion found that cardiac patients living in polluted areas were 43 percent more likely to have another heart attack than those who lived in areas with cleaner air.

By Dan Even

Israelis who have suffered a heart attack are far more at risk of a repeat attack if they live in an area with high levels of air pollution, new research has found.

The study, by Tel Aviv University and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, found that cardiac patients living in polluted areas were 43 percent more likely to have another heart attack than those who lived in areas with cleaner air. It also found they were 43 percent more likely to suffer congestive heart failure, and 46 percent more likely to have a stroke.

“Given that heart patients are already at least three times more likely than the general public to have another heart problem, they must be especially careful about air pollution,” said chief researcher Dr. Yariv Gerber, of the School of Public Health in Tel Aviv University’s medical department.

The researchers followed 1,120 heart patients aged up to 65 who had suffered heart attacks between 1992 and 1993 and were treated at eight hospitals in the central region. The research protocol neutralized the impact of age, sex and socioeconomic status. The patients were monitored through 2005.

Air quality was measured at 21 monitoring stations near the communities where the patients lived. The level of pollution exposure was determined by the number of pollutant particles up to 2.5 microns in size – small enough to penetrate a person’s airways – as well as by exposure to nitric oxide. Heavy vehicles and factories are primarily responsible for this type of pollution, making those who live in the center of the country particularly vulnerable.

A follow-up study conducted in 2011 found that the cardiac patients who were exposed to air pollution were 39 percent more likely to have died during the 19 years following their heart attack than those not so exposed.

“Arteriosclerosis is today considered to be a disease linked to inflammation, and air-polluting particles that irritate the cells lead to inflammation, in the same way smoking cigarettes does,” said Gerber, who noted that the findings supported the results of similar studies carried out in the United States and Europe.

Surprising result

The researchers were surprised by one result, however. In contrast to findings in the rest of the world, which link living in high-pollution areas to lower socioeconomic status, the dynamic in Israel’s central region means the opposite is true – that wealthier people were more likely to be living in areas with high levels of air pollution.

While the link between smoking and illness has been studied for decades, research on the relationship between air pollution and illness is relatively new. The first report of a link between air pollution and heart problems appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993.

In 2010, scientists in the north of Israel found a link between air pollution in the Haifa Bay area and the rate of lung cancer among men who lived there. This new study provides further evidence of the cumulative damage that pollution can cause.

Concentrations of PM emissions and Nitrogen Dioxide throughout the UK (image: Steve Barrett)

Well, it’s official. Air pollution sends you to an early grave in the United Kingdom. In a recent study from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics atMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers Steve Barrett and Steve Yim report that emissions from cars, trucks, planes and power plants cause 13,000 premature deaths in the United Kingdom each year.

Barret and Yim analyzed data from 2005 and found that car and truck exhaust was the single greatest contributor to premature death, affecting 3,300 people per year. By comparison, the report indicated that fewer than 3,000 Britons died in road accidents in 2005.

The report measured particulate matter (PM) which are fine particles, tiny sub-divisions of solid matter suspended in a liquid. Some PM is natural – from volcanoes, dust storms, grass or forest fires and others are man-made. PM emissions are highly regulated by governments, but many urban areas still violate PM emissions standards.

Let’s look at the data from a financial point of view. The total monetized life loss in the UK is estimated at £6–62bn per year or 0.4–3.5% of gross domestic product. In Greater London, PM concentrations are the highest, possibly due to higher shipping and aviation emissions because of the proximity of the airports to urban populations, and exceed EU standards. The report also estimates that non-UK EU emissions account for 30% of the 3,300 air quality-related deaths annually.

London is currently in violation of air quality standards set by the EU and the British government may face heavy EU fines if it fails to address its PM emissions.

The report was started by the Energy Efficient Cities initiative at the University ofCambridge and completed by MIT researchers.