Research arising from BHRUT board meeting yesterday

After comments made by board members yesterday, I did some more research using an AI tool as follows below:

Update, 6 November 2026: what our further checks show, and why the NHS data matters

When we published the low birth weight figures for the neighbourhoods along the High Road, we asked readers to point out any flaws. We’ve since tested the figures ourselves, and we want to share what we found.

1. The A12 comparison. We applied the same method to the neighbourhoods along the A12 (Eastern Avenue), from Wanstead to Harold Wood. Low birth weight there averaged 7.3% in 2020–24. That’s lower than along the whole length of the High Road from Ilford to Harold Wood (8.3% on the same measure; 8.7% to 10.7% on the Ilford to Chadwell Heath stretch alone) and the rest of Redbridge, Havering and Barking & Dagenham (8.0%), though above England (6.8%).

2. Allowing for other factors. We then compared all 85 neighbourhoods in the three boroughs, taking account of deprivation and of ethnicity (from the 2021 Census). Nationally, babies of Asian and Black mothers are on average more likely to weigh under 2.5 kg at birth, and that pattern explains most of the local differences. Once it’s taken into account, living near the High Road or the A12 shows no clear link with low birth weight at neighbourhood level.

3. Why that doesn’t settle the question. Each neighbourhood covers 7,000–10,000 people and is a kilometre or more across, while traffic pollution is highest within about 100 metres of the road. Averaging over whole neighbourhoods hides any effect on the homes closest to the road. A much larger study using home addresses, of 540,000 births across London in 2006–10 (Smith and others, BMJ, 2017), found that higher traffic pollution was linked to more full-term babies being born underweight. The effect was modest but real, and the study found no level of pollution that was safe.

4. Pollution has fallen since then, but not gone. Nitrogen dioxide has fallen a lot: the level predicted for the Tesco site is about half the London average in that study. Fine particles, which the study linked most strongly to low birth weight, have fallen much less. They also don’t disappear with electric cars, because much of the roadside share comes from brakes and tyres. The only modelling for the Tesco site predicts fine-particle levels above the government’s 2040 target and more than twice the World Health Organization’s guideline.

So the real question is this: are children living right next to our main roads now as healthy as their neighbours further away, and has falling pollution closed the gap? Only the NHS holds the data to answer it.

That’s what our three requests to Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust are designed to do. They compare homes close to the High Road with the surrounding neighbourhoods, and the two later requests separate the homes within 100 metres of the road from those 100–300 metres away. Because they cover different periods, we can see whether any gap has narrowed:

• Child admissions and deaths, 2019–21: whatdotheyknow.com/request/child_admissions_and_deaths_2019
• Child health and birth weight, 2021–26: whatdotheyknow.com/request/child_health_2021_2026_by_distan
• Full-term babies needing neonatal care for breathing problems, 2016–21 compared with 2021–26: whatdotheyknow.com/request/term_babies_admitted_to_the_neon

The requests ask only for combined totals, never information about any individual. Replies are due in early December, and we’ll publish them here, whatever they show.

If the data shows children near the road are now as healthy as everyone else, that’s good news and we’ll say so. If it doesn’t, then 1,385 more homes, many for families, should not be built beside the A118 without proper protection.

As before, comments and corrections are welcome.