Outdoor air quality has been receiving rather a lot of attention recently.  The new UK air quality strategy was published in January 2019 and the comparable document in Scotland, published in 2015, is currently under review.  

The main focus is certainly and unsurprisingly on outdoor air pollution since the UK is currently awaiting the outcome of a European Court of Justice referral for failing to meet the terms of the European Directive on ambient air quality.

But we all spend around 90 percent of our time indoors – at home, at work, or in school.  So surely our greatest exposure to possibly harmful air pollution may well be in the home? What might be the risks, and is there much we can do about it?

Assessing risk 

Worldwide, air pollution is estimated to be the fourth most serious risk of attributable health impact and this risk is about equally divided between indoor and outdoor air pollution. 

In fact, indoor air pollution in isolation presents as the 7thmost important risk, above both unsafe water and unsafe sex.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) attributes 4.3 million deaths annually to household air pollution.  In western societies, the risk factor is relatively much less although WHO still reckons that 120,000 deaths are caused each year in Europe by indoor air pollution – stacking up as 3 percent of all heart disease, 3 percent of chronic pulmonary disease, 3 percent of stroke and 2 percent of lung cancer fatalities.  

The WHO has estimated that the economic costs of deaths from air pollution, outdoor and indoor, amounts to 3.7 percent of UK national GDP, or over £70 Bn each year – so this is a very costly problem. 

Is anything being done?  Well, the European Commission established an indoor air quality working group in 2006, which was disbanded in 2012.  The European  seventh Environmental Action Programme in 2013 calls on the EU to develop an indoor air quality strategy – but, as yet, nothing further has happened.  

Determined action 

Independently, however, France has adopted an action plan; Italy has established its own indoor air quality standards for schools; and Finland has adopted its own general indoor air quality standards.  

The EU Directive on energy performance of buildings could eventually require new EU building regulations to adopt mandatory indoor air quality targets but, as yet, there are no measures in place beyond a requirement “to address the issues of healthy indoor climate conditions”.

This is despite very determined action on passive smoking. Early action was taken with smoking bans in aircraft from the 1980s, and now all EEA countries have some bans in place on smoking, but only in public places.

Indoor air quality can’t be considered in isolation, and is clearly related to the ambient outdoor air quality.  There are many challenges with harmful outdoor air quality but indoor air quality can, rather often, be even worse.  Equally, for some pollutants, it can sometimes be better. The relationship is complex.

The common pollutants, found outdoors and indoors at impactful concentrations, are nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, ozone and particulate matter (PM).  The pathways between outdoor and indoor environments are classified as through mechanical ventilation (air conditioning), natural ventilation (opening windows and doors) and infiltration (leaks around window and door frames, and through roof space).  

Anthropogenic particles

Typically, houses in the UK seem to show that about a third to a half of indoor air is exchanged between inside and outside each hour, but a huge range is found of about 10x between the most leaky and the most air-tight houses.

The permutations found across different buildings and with different outdoor conditions, of say wind strength and direction, can begin to produce hugely variable observable results.  

However, studies have shown that around 50 percent to 75 percent of the variability of indoor air quality of these common pollutants, is explained by outdoor variation.  If pollutants enter a building they can subsequently, to some degree, be diluted or concentrated by specific indoor conditions and activities.

Let’s look, first, at airborne particulates.  These come in various forms – some of which may well be natural, such as fine sand picked up from the Sahara Desert and transported on southerly winds to the UK, or volcanic ash blown here from Iceland. 

But, more generally, particulate matter is created by burning fossil fuels and, especially in urban areas, derived from vehicle exhaust fumes and dust created from vehicle brake-pads and tyres. 

These anthropogenic particles are oily-based and contaminated with numerous exotic chemicals.  Physically, a range of sizes of particles is created. From fairly large, known as PM10, indicating they have diameters of 10 microns or less (for comparison, a human hair has a diameter of about 50 microns) to very small, known as PM2.5 with diameters less than 2.5 microns.

Physiological effects

The physiological effects of these different particles are important:  larger particles (>10 microns) are filtered out in the nose and upper pharynx, while smaller particles (around 1 to 2 microns) reach deep into the alveoli, the air sacs, of the lungs and can cause much more severe damage.

The physical behaviour of these particles is also important. The fall velocity of particles of 1 micron diameter is as little as 0.1 mm per second.  Natural air movement in any room is likely to well above this value, so the particles never settle out.  In fact, it’s generally thought that particles below 10 microns will usually stay suspended indefinitely.

The ratio of indoor to outdoor air quality is found not to be lower than 0.7 for PM10 when there is no additional harmful indoor activity.  This suggests a small benefit of being indoors when high levels of PM10 are encountered outdoors.  

However, it is the finer particles, PM2.5, that are more dangerous to human health and these are not much reduced by being indoors, unless there is specific mechanical filtering by air conditioning units.  

It’s worth remembering that, for example, around 95 percent of the population of London are routinely exposed to harmful outdoor concentrations of fine particulates. Sources of additional particles, produced indoors, can include cooking and malfunctioning gas heaters or wood/coal burners, thereby adding to indoor concentrations.

Internal pollutants 

In contrast, at times of high outdoor pollen levels then these much larger particles (pollen is generally between 10 micron and 100 micron) are greatly reduced indoors and may only be at a level of around 2 percent or 3 percent. So, advice to hay fever sufferers to stay indoors is clearly well founded.

Some significant air pollution is generated solely within buildings.  Under extreme adverse conditions, what is known as sick building syndrome can have detrimental effect on wellbeing and also reduce productivity in affected offices. 

In the domestic situation, the main internally-generated pollutants are:  tobacco smoke, radon, gas and particles from burning fuels, chemicals released from household products, as well as gases released from a number of building materials. 

For example, gaseous aldehydes are released from fabric softeners, ketones from dry-cleaning fluids and various waxes and polishes, alkanes will be released from solvents and other cleaning compounds, esters from glues and resins, and alcohols from spray can propellants.  

Toluene and xylene may be released from paints, printed materials and electronic equipment. It’s been found that paints can continue to out-gas for many months after application.  Formaldehyde out-gases from plywood, and flame-retardant chemicals from furniture and carpets.  Some computer printers generate ozone.  

Candles and incense may release particles as well as benzene and styrene. Carbon monoxide can be a problem with domestic gas cookers, and acrolein is a dangerous product of overheated cooking oils. Pesticides can be released from wood preservatives. Even some house-plants release their own terpenes.

Organic compounds

This wide range of exotic chemicals can cause damage to liver, kidneys and the nervous system and irritate the eyes, nose and throat as well as cause headaches, nausea and, in the extreme cases, be an agent of various cancers.  

Children, pregnant women, existing asthma sufferers, those with cardiovascular or respiratory diseases, and the elderly may all be more vulnerable.

The US Environment Protection Agency reports that, on average, the level of such volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is between 2 and 5 times higher inside houses compared to outdoors.  Some activities, for example paint stripping, can raise levels to 1000 times higher.

As a separate issue, there are numerous domestic biogenic air-borne pollutants that may cause heath impacts.  These include fungal spores, bacteria, viruses, dust mites, arthropods and protozoa deriving from pets, damp conditions, and poorly maintained systems like drip-trays and ventilation systems.  Allergies, infections and asthma attacks are potentially related symptoms.

Many of these in-house problems may be exacerbated by our response to climate change in trying to seal our homes better in order to provide improved energy efficiency, and by installing thermal insulation, some types of which may themselves create air pollution.  

Higher temperatures and higher humidity, related to the sealing of buildings and stagnation of air, may aggravate the formation of fungi and moulds and the release of spores.

Mitigating actions

There are mitigating actions that householders can take: opening windows to ventilate the house, particularly when the outside air has low pollution levels, installing and routinely using an extractor hood over the cooker, extracting damp air from bathrooms, ensuring that low VOC paints are used when decorating, using natural materials for carpets and other coverings whenever possible, and minimising the use of propellent sprays and man-made polishes.

Another proactive response might be to deploy pot plants in the house.  The plant-root-soil zone provides particularly effective bio-degradation of VOCs, while leaves also denature chemicals and physically trap air-borne particles.  

It’s important to select the right plants, among the best being aloe vera, several palms, rubber plant, dragon tree, ivy, ficus benjaminaand the spider plant – all of which are quite tough and thrive in indoor climates. 

Studies of the efficacy of plants/soils was carried out by NASA to investigate ways to purify air in the sealed confines of a space station.  Their experiments showed between 50 percent and 70 percent removal of formaldehyde and benzene and slightly lower, around 40 percent, removal of trichloroethylene over a 24-hour period in a sealed chamber.  

These plants also release very little VOCs, such as terpenes, themselves.  Real life experiments produce quite varying and sometimes contradictory results, but it has been suggested that one plant is required for every 10 sq m of floor area, perhaps occupying about 10% of overall air space.

Coordinated regulation

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been publishing guidelines on safe concentrations of common indoor air pollutants since 1987.  There are, of course, legal requirements under Health & Safety legislation for employees to be provided with a safe working environment, but that doesn’t extend to the home environment.  

There are numerous efforts by many suppliers these days to provide low-emission products, so clearly there is a growing market of consumers who are aware of some of the claims of adverse health impacts of indoor air pollution.  

But there remains little in the way of standardisation or coordinated regulation or consistent labelling.

There can be competing priorities as well – for example, Trading Standards will enforce on retailers the requirements for low combustibility of domestic soft furnishings, but that will likely entail use of chemical fire retardants on the fabrics, which can then be released into indoor air and dust.  These retardants are well-known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors which also bio-accumulate in the body and persist for a very long time.

The most dangerous chemicals have fairly recently been banned and there is an ongoing debate about the relative levels of risk to human health of possible house fires compared to exposure to the chemicals.

Complex environment 

Since we spend so much time indoors, and much of that at home, it is perhaps anomalous, as WHO points out, that routine and standardised monitoring is undertaken throughout Europe for outdoor air quality but routine monitoring of indoor air quality hardly exists.  

The European Commission admits that the variability and complexity of the indoor environment makes risk assessment difficult and that, currently, the studies are insufficient.  

It is suggested that indoor air may contain as many as 900 different chemicals, particles, and bio-materials with potential health effects. The Commission is not in favour of enforceable indoor air quality standards, because of the privacy of the indoor space and also the impracticality of surveillance.  

It seems that a continuing effort to create an evidence base and then apply appropriate building regulations and product standards might be a more acceptable route.  

In the UK, it is really only regulations applying to paints that currently impose some control over the potential release of VOCs into indoor air, while UK Building Regulations also impose requirements on ventilation to limit levels of a small range of aggregated indoor pollutants, but based on an assumption of outdoor air being unpolluted.

Aggressive action

The new UK air quality strategy commits the Government to raise awareness specifically of VOC pollution indoors, to seek a voluntary labelling code for VOC-containing products, and to work with producers to reduce the content of harmful chemicals.  These are worthy but rather weak commitments.

No single Government Department has sole responsibility for indoor air pollution, so perhaps a more detailed, co-ordinating strategy and action plan for indoor air pollution in isolation is now necessary.

If the costs to the economy are nearly 2 percent of GDP, or about £30 Bn per year, then the problem surely merits much more aggressive action with regulatory controls on home design, construction materials, finishes, domestic equipment, furniture, fittings and consumables.

Overall, the task is huge and it may well be much better undertaken at European level, or even at wider international level.  

Failing that, there’s no excuse not to act now, here at home, and in the home.

This Author 

James Curran is the former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.  He researches and writes on sustainability, climate change, ecosystems, air pollution, and green finance.

Image: Ervins Strauhmanis, Flickr. 
 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

More than two million Londoners are living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, figures published by the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan show.

Updates from the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory which analyses air quality in the capital, show that more than 400,000 children among those living in parts of the city which exceed the legal limits for pollution.

Mr Khan said the analysis showed there were no significant improvements in pollution between 2013 and 2016, when his predecessor Boris Johnson was in office.

Legal limit

In 2016, more than 400 schools were still in areas with toxic air.

While the number of primary schools in parts of the city where pollutant nitrogen dioxide exceeded legal limits was down slightly in 2016 compared to 2013, the number of secondary schools in polluted areas was up.

But there have since been significant improvements in measured pollution levels, he said.

Air pollution is down, with a 57 percent reduction in the number of hours recorded in which the city bust the legal limit for nitrogen dioxide so far this year compared to the same period last year.

In the first three months of 2016, 43 monitoring sites in London recorded hours exceeding their legal limit of nitrogen dioxide – with 13 going over the annual maximum of 18 hours above the cut-off.

Taxi fleet

But so far in 2019, just 10 monitoring sites have recorded breaches of the hourly limit, and none have hit the annual maximum threshold.

The figures come ahead of the introduction of the ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) which will charge the most polluting cars, motorcycles and vans £12.50 a day to drive in the city centre, and £100 for lorries, buses and coaches.

Officials said hourly breaches of nitrogen dioxide limits were almost exclusively due to traffic, and the improvements are likely to be down to cleaning up Transport for London buses and drivers already complying with the ULEZ.

Mr Khan said: “From the very outset I have been crystal clear that I would do everything in my power to tackle London’s toxic air crisis.

Motorists

“So far in my mayoralty, this includes cleaning up our bus and taxi fleet and establishing the largest air quality monitoring network of any major city.

“The introduction of the world’s first 24-hour seven-day-a-week ultra low emission zone next week marks a watershed moment in our fight to clean up our filthy air.”

He added: “The data I’ve published today gives an even clearer picture of the urgent need to take action.”

Polling by YouGov ahead of the introduction of the ULEZ suggests 80% of Londoners and 90 percent of drivers know something about the scheme – although only one in five motorists are expected to drive into the central zone.

Dr Penny Woods, Chief Executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “If more than two million Londoners were drinking toxic water the outcry would be huge. While pollution in the air might be hard to spot – the damage it’s doing isn’t.

Children’s lungs

“Toxic air is stunting the growth of our children’s lungs – something that puts them at risk of infections and breathing problems for the rest of their lives.

“London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone is a good first step to cleaning up the capital’s air but nationally we need stronger action if we want to protect the whole country’s lungs.

“This is why we’re calling on the government to enshrine the World Health Organisation’s limit for fine particulate matter into the upcoming Environment Bill.

“Legally binding limits are necessary to ensure no one breathes dangerous levels of pollution, and the Bill is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to guarantee we will all be able to breathe clean air.”

These Authors

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent. Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

In the apparently peaceful Somerset village of Wedmore, something is stirring. Actually, more accurately, something has been stirring since 2006 – a vibrant community action on climate change. 

You might expect to find a hardworking community of people across a number of typical, or maybe atypical, trades and occupations, given Wedmore’s location on the edge of the Someset Levels. 

Yet, something else, something actually quite urgent and important, is driving this community now – climate breakdown.

Climate breakdown

We’ve already had some pretty strong warnings here in the UK about climate breakdown. The heatwave of 2003 killed more than 2,000 people in the UK alone from heat exhaustion. Brogdale, a hamlet beside the M2 motorway in Kent, experienced an all-time record high temperature of 38.5 degrees C (101.3 degrees F).

We’ve also had horrendous floods right across the country, including on the Levels. Seabirds around our coasts have been adversely affected by rising sea-surface temperatures – increasing by around 0.2-0.9 degrees C per decade since the 1980s – impacting food supplies and habitats, resulting in reduced breeding among kittiwakes for example. 

Food supplies for the UK’s human population have been hit too, as crops suffer after last year’s extreme weather.

It is now becoming very clear that people all around the world need to act right now to stop climate change. In 2006, a group of people in Wedmore decided to start doing just that.

Multiple successes

Steve Mewes, who works for Somerset Wildlife Trust, said: “We had a street fair here in Wedmore. Soon after I moved back to the village, I set up a stall, chatted to people about green issues and ran a questionnaire around the village to gather people’s thoughts and the core group came out of that really.

“We had a public meeting of about, I suppose, 40 people. We got the key people who wanted to get involved and take action. We took it from there.

“So, that’s where we started really, and we’ve always had an ethos of just getting things done, not talking about it but actually getting on doing things, and that has kept us going for the last 13 years”.

Steve has kept an old list of things that Green Wedmore has done over the years since it first formed. These activities include freecycle days where people gather together to give stuff away that they don’t need anymore. The group has also run five produce markets; created a local cookbook; held repair cafe’s; launched a plastic bag-free project way before the issue of plastic pollution became so widely known; held a green fair and movie nights at which it has provided environmental support and advice; took part in an open eco-homes scheme; ran a scheme where the group bought about 300 fruit trees to sell to the public; held an energy cafe; held twenty-two litter pick-up days; written forty articles for the local magazine; organised a pass-it-on book sharing scheme; held talks for local groups and installed an electric car charging point in the village. 

Green Wedmore also set and manage two community woodlands and a community orchard. It has supported a solar power project on the first school academy and recently has been trying to initiate a ‘Warmer Wedmore’ scheme in which the group has been trying to find a local way of organising a fuel poverty project – a local way of replicating the Green New Deal basically.

There have been various solar PV schemes along the way, with solar on the village hall linked to a Tesla battery. Add all that up, and Wedmore’s breathtaking achievement in the realm of environmental activities would probably be fairly hard to match in communities of a similar size.

Well organised

The group is well organised. It has a quick thirty minute business meeting every month, usually held on Monday evenings in the local pub, following which there are speakers or a longer discussion about particular issues.

It doesn’t set itself particular targets, mainly because it has usually found it fairly difficult to apply reliable measurement systems. However, this will change with the Zero Carbon Wedmore project that the group has just recently embarked on, led by local resident Sonya Bedford whose day job is Head of Energy at Stephens-Scown LLP in Exeter, and who is thus very experienced in this particular area. 

One of the really amazing things about Wedmore is that it now has a solar farm helping to provide clean renewable energy to the village. The solar farm was developed by Wedmore Community Power Cooperative. Although it isn’t linked legally to Green Wedmore, Steve says that the people on its board are often the same people in Green Wedmore (Steve himself is currently the chair!). 

Green Wedmore secures funding in a number of ways. Although the community solar farm has been really useful, helping to fund a a benchmarking report on Zero Carbon Wedmore for example, most of its money has come from general fundraising, such as selling of recipe books at fairs, or local things have been made or just applying for odd bits of funding here, there and everywhere. It also helps that the group actively tries to keep everything as low-cost as it can.

Sonya said: “In some ways it is a slightly different model to a lot of other community groups in that we raise money as cheaply as possible to do projects, and then generally don’t take any returns back. Particularly going forward when there’s no feed-in tariff, we will just raise the money to achieve a project and then gift that to whoever is benefitting from that project, because it all contributes to our Zero Carbon target anyway.

Grant funding

Sonya continued: “For the village hall solar, there was a variety of funding. Some was grant funded, some of it was donations, some of it was corporate donation such as from Next Energy.

“Going forward, it is going to be even more important to get the grant funding because there won’t be any subsidies.

“Even though there’s little return for investors at the moment, we have been successful in getting some grant funding from the community power coop to take the Zero Carbon project on its next step to feasibility study done, which will hopefully unlock some further grant funding to build more stuff.

“Once we’ve got the facts and figures at our fingertips about how we reach our targets and what we can do to get there quickly, we can then apply for more grant funding or government funding to get there.”

Political influence 

The biggest challenge for the village was the solar farm. Steve said: “We were very lucky in that there was about 70-80 percent local support at the planning application, which is almost unheard of in the renewable energy business. There was some local opposition but they are mostly talking to us by now.”

Any community that gets involved in climate-related activities faces the risk of, sooner or later, running into local or national politics. Green Wedmore has adopted a somewhat flexible position on this.

Steve continued: “The only thing we’re really strict about is focus on the community of Wedmore. We have a close relationship with our local MP, James Heappey, we make a point of meeting him regularly. He came to our group soon after he was nominated as a candidate in 2013, when he was fresh out of the army and perhaps a little new to climate change. 

Sonya thinks Heappey’s language has definitely changed over the years that Green Wedmore has been meeting with him. To his credit, Heappey continues to meet the group even though it is unlikely to attract any votes from this quarter.

However, the real political influence from the group has emanated from Zero Carbon Wedmore which Zero Carbon Britain has been citing as an example of what zero carbon projects can achieve.

None of the other projects supported by Zero Carbon Britain has achieved as much as Wedmore has and Sonya believes that’s where the group’s influence has been really evident on a national basis.

Zero Carbon

Sonya explained: “I joined the group two years ago, as an interested person living locally. I’d been following the progress of Green Wedmore for a long time, out of interest in what was going on.

“I’ve been studying up at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Green Wedmore kindly paid for me to go on the Zero Carbon Training and I came back and we launched 2045 zero carbon target for Wedmore.

“We decided that we would deliver five teams of zero carbon, which are transport, energy, health, food and wellbeing.

“Wellbeing is quite an unusual one, because it encompasses all those and its not part of the tenet of Zero Carbon Britain but its really important because we live in a really nice place, and we want to keep it nice and keep everyone healthy and happy.

“We started mapping out what we’re going to do under those teams and everything we’ve done or want to do in the future, all contributes to one of those things getting us towards the target”.

Next steps

From that, the group began new projects, including a retail scheme, more traditional work around more renewable energy and looking at additional woodland.

Steve has been helping to run an extremely successful food trail project which is going to be bigger and better this year, focusing on local food and local producers to try and increase the amount of activity there. 

Sonya said: “The next step will be to properly map and do a feasibility study around how we get to the target, whatever target that is – probably 2030 or if we can get there quicker, and then map out what needs to be done, compared to our carbon use and emissions use within the village. 

The thing that really comes across from Green Wedmore is how amazingly positive it all is. Sonya says that’s why the wellbeing side is really important, as people really enjoy being engaged with a group that’s doing something positive and the group actively tries to make it as easy as possible to get involved.

So keep your eyes on this particular community, as it sets out to demonstrate what can really be done when people get together.

This Author

Robin Whitlock is a full-time freelance journalist specialising in climate change and renewable energy. He is a correspondent for Renewable Energy Magazine and regularly writes for other magazines on similar subjects.

The people of Durdih village, in the state of Bihar, India, have a simple existence close to nature, but the encroachment of paved roads and merchants peddling plastic-wrapped snacks has led to some unwelcome changes. 

The village has a long history of indigenous farming practices in which the cow is the centre of all agriculture.  A significant amount of this knowledge is being lost as life in the village changes and adapts to new ways of farming. 

Walking through a rural village such as this, you might not expect to see children with smart phones eating packaged candies and oily snack foods. But this is what you’ll witness walking through the unpaved village roads of Durdih today.  With a less than optimal waste management system you will find the small drainage canals of Durdih littered with used wrappers.  

Reviving knowledge

One man is trying to change all this.  Kumar Neeraj is a fourth-generation farmer of the fields of Bihar, and he sees a new future for the lands that his great grandfather wrestled back from the hands of exploitative higher caste farmers almost 100 years ago.  

These farmers were forcing the lower caste villagers into slave labor and stealing their farm land.  Neeraj’s great grandfather, Bodhan Yadav, would not let this happen. 

As the story goes, Bodhan, a well-known local wrestler, won a fist-fight and reclaimed the lands.  Neeraj said: “My village would not be here today if it wasn’t for my great grandfather giving these lands back to the people.”   

Neeraj is one of the many farmers reviving the use of the ancient natural fertilizer called Jiwamrita (jeev-amrita), which has been used for thousands of years in India. 

The only ingredients in this miracle fertilizer are cow dung, cow urine, evaporated cane juice or raw sugar and water.  Neeraj says this is all you need in order to cultivate healthy soil.

Natural fertiliser  

Neeraj treats his seeds with it before they are planted, treats the soil with it during planting and waters the plants with it as they are growing – and it works. 

He has been cultivating his single-acre plot of land with this method for the past three months and his plants are thriving, while many of the surrounding plots of land have sick plants. 

He says this is due to too many chemical fertilizers being used in the soil: “The main reason why this method of farming is so amazing is because you don’t need anything.  Almost all farmers in India have a cow, and if they don’t they know someone who does.”

This method is part of a series of ancient techniques that have been forgotten in India and are now being revived by people like Neeraj.  The practice is so old that it is even mentioned in one the oldest books in existence, the Vedas. 

The Vedas says that producing healthy, nutritional food is easier than we think.  Nature has its own method of cultivation that is even better than anything that man has invented.  Nature has been creating bountiful amounts of food for far longer than humanity has walked the earth. 

All we need to do is nurture this already existing system. 

Khetee project

Neeraj’s project is called Khetee – which means ‘farming’ in Sanskrit – and is part of a group of many farms doing very similar things throughout India. 

Neeraj maintains that he has not invented anything new, he is simply helping to revive a very old practice that he believes will stop global warming, help clean the streams and oceans of the earth and provide poison free food, water and soil to everyone on earth.  

Neeraj is openly accepting volunteers and learners on his farm. He wants to spread this knowledge to whoever wishes to receive it. 

I have much gratitude in my heart for the generosity Neeraj and his family showed me during my stay at Khetee farms and I can’t wait to come back in the future to see how the landscape of the fields or Durdih have changed.    

This Author

Campbell Waldron is a freelance writer and traveling journalist interested in indigenous ecology and agroforestry.  Campbell studied soil biology and botany at Mahirishi University of Management.

The Sustainable Soils Alliance recently hosted a groundbreaking event that brought government ministers into the same room as campaigners, and found that they shared an understanding of the importance of soil. But we need to be mindful of the distinction between rhetoric and action.

So much was clear as the Real Farming Conference celebrated its first decade. The conference was initially set up in direct opposition to the Oxford Farming Conference, its “mainstream”, National Farmers’ Union-backed sister. They run on the same days, in the same city.

Looking back at the tweets emerging from the two this year, it was sometimes difficult to know which was which.  New terms like “agroecology” were emerging from the older sister, as well as expressions of the need to protect and restore soil health and to slash the use of pesticides and fertilisers. We’re hearing similar things from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, and even from the mouth of Conservative Secretary of State Michael Gove.

Standards and definitions 

We’re beginning to understand that agriculture must slash its climate change emissions and that it cannot keep coshing nature with pesticides that have done enormous damage to our ecosystems. Soils can be fertile without artificial fertilisers if the health of immensely complex natural systems is to be maintained.

So there’s a lot of talk about agroecology and the soil health it produces – and a lot of apparent agreement. Many agree that agroecology is “an ecosystems approach to agriculture”. But beyond that, what it actually is, and which systems and methods can be included within it, is open to a very wide range of definitions.

Saying that we need to adopt agroecology to prevent climate change, ensure food security and end the trashing of our collapsing ecosystems is a statement with which many will agree, then, but that alone doesn’t get us far.

Many experts in the field might visit a farm and broadly agree on whether or not it fits the classification, but “it feels right” is no basis for a system of certification. We need a more robust means for consumers, retailers and regulators to classify farms as meeting the standard of being agroecological.

But we don’t have time to develop the necessary framework. The IPCC has told us we have just 12 years to turn this planet around and slash our carbon emissions. Insect studies are demonstrating that our ecosystems are on the very edge of disaster. The state of our soils is an enormous threat to future food security.

Traditional systems

Governments, communities, and consumers need to act not to demand that our lands be farmed agroecologically.

So what to do? There are several traditional systems that produce agroecological outcomes. Permaculture and biodynamics are two, but the first has defied attempts to classify it and is uncomfortable with the embrace of regulation; the second has a basis in beliefs that don’t fit comfortably with most.

There is only one alternative available: organics. There is a well-established legal and classificatory framework and registration systems for organically produced food. 

In the UK, just 517,000 hectares of land is farmed organically, 2.9 percent of the total farmed area. That’s not much.

But the story is very different in other parts of the EU. Across the entire Union, 7 percent of land is farmed organically, but it is 24 percent in Austria, 19 percent in Sweden and 15 percent in Italy. These countries have led the way, shown what is possible when organic agriculture is promoted by governments and demanded by consumers.

There’s a lot of evidence that there’s a great and unmet demand for organic produce across the world. And there’s the practical reality of a world in which we’re already at, or have exceeded, our planetary limits.

We need to make organic the basic standard, the way we expect farming to be conducted.

One of the current problems with that is that certification is expensive – a cost that can be hard for farmers to meet – and the continuing cost of inspection and checking also has significant costs.

One questioner of Michael Gove in his first visit to the Real Farming Conference in 2018 had a suggestion to deal with this. Instead of having to be specially certified as organic, why should any farmer not using organic methods have to face the costs of registration, of checking of their methods and approach, and of labelling appropriately their methods so consumers can know what they are buying?

We need to make organic farming our standard farming system. Any deviation from that should occur only when it’s absolutely necessary – and should be documented, controlled and labelled accordingly. The costs of this deviation should be borne by the producer of non-organic food.

If we are going to look after our soils, and our fragile, much-abused planet, that’s the only alternative.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett recently completed a review of recent literature on soil carbon for Green MEP Molly Scott-Cato. Rich Earth covers the views outlined here in more detail.

Image: George M. Groutas, Flickr.