I worry about what working at 快猫短视频 is doing to my health. Not because of the job itself, but because our office is located in one of the many parts of London where . My colleagues and I breathe in a lot more nitrogen dioxide than is good for us. And if you live or work near to a busy road, or travel on them, you probably do too.
Rich countries like the UK have made a lot of progress when it comes to air pollution. We鈥檝e gotten rid of the soot from industry that plagues countries like China and India, and more insidious threats such as lead from petrol. But we do have a big problem with nitrogen dioxide from traffic fumes. London鈥檚 Oxford Street has the highest recorded levels of nitrogen dioxide in the world.
According to a European Union directive that came into force in 2010, nitrogen dioxide levels should average less than 40 micrograms per cubic metre a year and the hourly average shouldn鈥檛 exceed 200 micrograms on more than 18 occasions in a year. Parts of London sometimes breach this limit more than 18 times a week.
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That鈥檚 outrageous, yet until recently there was little outcry about this. ClientEarth, a group of activist lawyers, is trying to change things. It sued the UK government to force it to take action. The supreme court ruled in its favour last year.
That meant the government had to come up with a new plan for reducing nitrogen dioxide. But its new plan wasn鈥檛 much better than the old one: London would continue to breach the limits until at least 2025, for example. So last week ClientEarth announced it was again taking legal action to force the government to come up with a better plan.
Invisible killer
The trouble is nitrogen dioxide is an invisible killer. A major report out last month concluded that , of which nearly half are due to nitrogen dioxide.
However, it isn鈥檛 possible to point to any one death and say that person was killed by nitrogen dioxide. Rather, some people are becoming ill and dying sooner than they should have done. 鈥淲hat we are talking about is a shortening of life,鈥� says Ian Mudway of King鈥檚 College London. The headline figure of 40,000 deaths is a statistical way of representing this toll.
The lack of actual bodies 聽makes it hard to mobilise public opinion. And without an angry electorate, getting the government to take action is going to be an uphill struggle.
Air pollution does seem to be moving up the agenda thanks to the efforts of ClientEarth and others. It has become mayor, for instance, and a recent YouGov poll commissioned by ClientEarth found that for people in the capital.
Nitrogen dioxide pollution is an issue in many other traffic-clogged cities around the world too, but the problem is particularly bad in Europe because of efforts to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging people to buy diesel cars. Diesel vehicles emit lots of nitrogen dioxide and 鈥� as the Volkswagen scandal made clear 鈥� the systems meant to mop up this pollution don鈥檛 work nearly as well as claimed.
In the short term we need to get the most polluting vehicles off busy city roads. And in the long term, we need to switch to hybrid or electric vehicles. If we power these vehicles with renewable energy, we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the same time 鈥� a win-win situation. But it won鈥檛 happen unless we demand it.
