Why we need our own air quality report to counter the bent, but legal, Tesco report

This is Mayor Khan in 2017, reported  HERE

“It is an outrage that more than 800 schools, nurseries and other educational institutions are in areas breaching legal air pollution limits,” he said.

“This is an environmental challenge, a public health challenge but also – and no one talks about this – it is fundamentally an issue of social justice. If you are a poor Londoner you are more likely to suffer from illegal air.” 

A key means of how developers get away with getting planning permission in poorer areas are bent, but perfectly legal, air quality reports to say their planned development will not damage health.

How this legal trick is pulled off is shown at page 24 of the Aether Air Quality assessment HERE where Tesco's air specialists forecast a 0.8% annual mean increase in toxic NO2 pollution if the development goes ahead.

This figure may well be correct, but it is an average so includes:

1 - The time from 11pm to 5am when light traffic on roads pulls the average down

2 - Sunday's lighter traffic pulling the average down

3 - School holidays when there is lighter traffic pulling the average down

Pollution annual mean benchmarks are developer friendly, what is required is an alternative child friendly benchmark, based upon when children are actually at the school.

This is why we need Professor Peckham, the academic whose evidence was favoured by the courts in the Gladman case, the first in England where a housing development was stopped on air quality grounds, to produce an air quality report to challenge the one bent, although legally, in Tesco's favour.

Page 11 of the Tesco report attached lists four local schools. One, Chadwell primary, is over the safe legal  limit of 40 µg/m3 per the annual mean. Another, Goodmayes primary, has an annual mean at 36 µg/m3 in 2017, but this could be over the real child friendly benchmark, if a new benchmark is calculated for when children are actually at the school.

The short time impacts on child health are at the link FriendsofEarth The academic evidence of short term exposure to NO2 lies behind the welcome Redbridge Council decision to close roads by three schools per the link RoadCloure Further there is a evidence that that no idling zones improve air quality and so reduce damage to child health. I quote from a briefing paper to NICE quality standard QS 181

“The evidence of improved local air quality from initiatives such as engine idling enforcement – research conducted by Kings College found that on anti-idling action days emissions fall by 20%. There is a need to focus this activity around high-risk areas such as hospitals and schools.”

Redbridge is working towards no idling zones at schools per page 6 of a 2020 air report Council report

All this makes it all the more compelling for us to fund an alternative air report per the crowdfunder appeal here Air Quality Report to Stop the Tesco Toxic Towers

Air Quality Report to Stop the Tesco Toxic Towers We need an air quality report to challenge the one prepared by Tesco. It could mean the difference between winni...

Air quality damage is like the damage caused by smoking, it is taking years for there to be public acceptance that air pollution is a killer and something needs to be done about it.

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